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V 



DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 



by 



JEROME DOWD, M. A. 

Professor of Sociology, University of Oklahoma. Formerly Pro- 
fessor of Social Science, Trinity College, N. C, Resident Lec- 
turer in Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Fellow in Sociology, 
T'niversity of Chicago. Author of The Negro Races. 



Oklahoma City 

The Harlow Publishing Company 

1921 



74- 



."71,9 



Copyright, 1921, by 
The Harlow Publishing Company 



FEB -1 1921 



0)CI.A608535 



PREFACE 

When I look back upon the busiest period of 
my life, i. e., up to about the age of twelve years, 
I recall the ardent enthusiasm and tireless enter- 
prise which characterized my existence. 1 recall 
how the exciting rivalries and stirring adventures 
of youth so crowded every day of my life that I 
scarcely had time to eat or sleep, to say nothing of 
time for reflection. The w^orld to me was altogether 
external. I was too busy weighing, measuring and 
manipulating it to have a moment available for in- 
trospection or self-consciousness. 

One day, however, I chanced to pass through 
a room occupied by my sisters, wherein the numer- 
ous mirrors were so opposed as to reflect my life- 
sized figure from every angle. I stopped suddenly 
with a shock of surprise which I can never forget. 
For the first time in my life I felt self-conscious, and 
began to imagine how I appeared in the eyes of my 
friends and enemies. 

As in the case of every individual, so I believe 
that every nation passes through a period of self- 
forgetfulness, and arrives at self-consciousness only 
with the coming of adolescence. At any rate, the 
American people have certainly passed through this 
spontaneous period. Up to the present time, they 
have been so absorbed in the conquest and exploita- 
tion of the external world that they have not had 
time for introspection, and have not formed any 

III 



IV Preface 

well-defined conception of their national character. 
For example, I remember, upon reading De Tocque- 
ville's Democracy in America some years ago, how 
greatly surprised I was to find certain characteris- 
tics attributed to Americans which I had never 
dreamed of; and in reading other foreign comments 
upon America I have been even more surprised at 
the characteristics assigned to complete the life- 
sized .American portrait. My interest in these char- 
acteristics as reflected from abroad has led me to 
write this volume in which I attempt to reveal the 
characteristics of the people of the United States, 
and to show to what extent they have been the out- 
come of our democratic institutions. 

At the present time, when the whole world 
seems to be experiencing a democratic upheaval, it 
occurs to me that a study of democracy in America 
ought to be of great interest and value to the young 
democracies of other countries, and ought to be 
equally of interest and value to our own people in 
helping us to preserve such of our characteristics as 
are praiseworthy, and to outgrow or amend those 
which exist to our discredit. The time has come 
when we should have a consciousness of our national 
character, and begin to mould it in conformity to 
rational ideals. 

It should be borne in mind that, for the most 
part, the critics of American democracy have be- 
longed to a period when national provincialism and 
national antagonisms were much stronger than 
they are today, and when a sense of loyalty to one's 



Preface v 

own country seemed to demand the disparagement 
of everything novel or unfamiliar in any other 
country. It is also to be noted, that America has 
always furnished an inviting field for criticism be- 
cause of the vastness of the country, its scattered 
population, and the extraordinary individuality of 
its people, resulting in marked deviations from the 
conventions of the Old World. The foreign travel- 
ers necessarily encountered in America methods of 
doing business, manners, customs, institutions, and 
moral and religious practices which they had not 
the wisdom to understand, and which furnished 
them with subject-matter only for scoffing and re- 
proof. Furthermore, during the first half of ' the 
nineteenth century, America stood alone as an ex- 
ample of a great national democracy, and was the 
target for every royalist and aristocratic wit in 
Europe. These writers found fault with everything 
that they saw or failed to see. They derided our 
statesmen, spoke contemptuously of our literature 
and art; they complained of our bad roads, rough- 
riding coaches, uncomfortable hotels, undeferential 
servants, our rocking-chairs, hot bread, table man- 
ners, and our chewing of tobacco and spitting. 

The sneering criticism of America has not been 
confined entirely to superficial writers, but has some- 
times emanated from men of the first rank. For 
instance, Renan, wishing to please the royalist fac- 
tion in France, once remarked that if France con- 
tinued republican she would become a second 
America. (To this, Paul Blouet replied in 1891, 



VI Preface 

''May nothing worse befall her.") Samuel John- 
son on one occasion declared that America was 
peopled by rogues and scoundrels and should be 
thankful for anything short of hanging. John Rus- 
kin wrote in his Fors Clavigera that New York was 
one of the things that he would like to destroy. 
Rudyard Kipling said of New York thac it was in- 
habited by the insane, and that American enter- 
prise was only grotesciue ferocity. The English 
Quarterly Review carried on for many years such a 
villainous attack upon everything American that it 
called forth the following lament from Washington 
Irving : 

" *'Is this golden bond of kindred sympathies, so 
rare between nations, to be broken forever? Per- 
haps it is for the best; it may dispel an illusion 
which might have kept us in mental vassalage; 
which might have interfered occasionally with our 
true interests, and prevented the growth of proper 
national pride. But it is hard to give up the kindred 
tie; and there are feelings dearer than interest, 
closer to the heart than pride, that will still make 
us cast back a look of regret, as we wander farther 
and farther from the parental roof, and lament the 
waywardness of the parent that would repel the 
affections of the child." 

About 1843 we were made to feel very bitter 
over the revelation of America characteristics in 
Martin Chuzzlewit; but at the same time we over- 
looked the frightful mortification of the British that 
the nativity of Mr. Pecksniff was assigned to their 



Preface vii 

island, and that America furnished the conditions 
for the renovation of Mr. Chuzzlewit's character. 

While the general trend of English criticism 
of America has been very unfriendly, there have 
been exceptions in the case of writers whose good- 
will toward us has led them to exaggerate our vir- 
tues and to cover our faults with a gloss. In taking 
account of those Englishmen who have unmercifully 
attacked everything American, we should never 
forget that our utterances, particularly in Congress, 
and on Fourth of July occasions, have shown an 
equally antagonistic feeling toward the English. 

Altogether, those English and American writ- 
ers and speakers of by-gone days, who have culti- 
vated international antagonisms, remind us of silly 
children making faces at each other. In the light 
of our present closer common interest, our wider 
sympathy, and deeper comprehension, we should 
forget the littleness which has made us strangers to 
each other, and be able to receive mutual criticism 
with a good grace. We Americans especially need 
to realize that we have something to gain from for- 
eign opinion, and should learn to heed those foreign 
students of our institutions whose sincerity deserves 
our confidence, and whose insight throws a wel- 
comed light upon our pathway where it is dark and 
uncertain. 

The time has come when discussions as to the 
comparative merits of monarchy, artistocracy and 
democracy among the nations of the world, have 
only a scholastic interest; for it is well known that 



VIII Preface 

under existing forms of government, some democ- 
racies are in reality the worst examples of despot- 
ism, and some monarchies are in fact thorough-go- 
ing democracies. Democracy has no necessary con- 
nection with the nominal form of a government, 
but is the organization of public opinion and its ex- 
pression in the life of a people. It is a tendency 
which has always and everywhere been in process 
to the extent that the development of enlighten- 
ment, communication and cooperation has blazed 
the way. 

In the light of this view of democracy, it is not 
presumption to suppose that the experience and 
present status of democracy in America may be of 
interest to every other nation. 

"America," says Bryce, ''has in some respects 
anticipated European nations. She is walking be- 
fore them along a path which they may probably 
follow. She carries behind her, to adopt a famous 
simile of Dante's, a lamp whose light helps those 
who come after her more than it always does her- 
self, because some of the dangers she has passed 
through may not recur at any other point in her 

path ; whereas they, following in her footsteps, may 
stumble in the same stony places, or be entangled 

in the quagmires into which she slipped." 

Jerome Dowd. 
Norman, Okla., 
November, 1920. 



\ 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

Psychological Characteristics of the Americans 1- 46 

CHAPTER II. 

Industrial Life 47- 64 

CHAPTER III. 

Industrial Life (Continued) 65- 69 

CHAPTER IV. 

The American Women 70- 99 

CHAPTER V. 

Domestic Life 100-115 

CHAPTER VI. 

Domestic Life (Continued) 116-135 

CHAPTER VIL 

Political Life 136-161 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Political Life (Continued) 162-179 

CHAPTER IX. 

Political Life (Continued) 180-186 

CHAPTER X. 

Political Life (Continued) 187-197 

CHAPTER XI. 

Political Life (Continued) 198-207 

CHAPTER XII. 

Political Life (Continued) 208-220 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Political Life (Continued) 221-229 

IX 



X Contents 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Political Life (Continued) 230-254 

CHAPTER XV. 

Social Organization 255-264 

CHAPTER XVI. 
.J^ Religious Life 265-281 

CHAPTER XVII: 

Religious Life (Continued) 282-299 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

General Intellectual Life 300-307 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Literature 308-337 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Press 338-353 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The Bench and Bar 354-373 

CHAPTER XXII. 

The Drama 374-385 

CHAPTER XXIIl. 

Oratory 386-394 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Music. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture 395-413 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Industrial Art and General Considerations on 

America's Achievement in all the Arts : 414-427 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Manners 428-448 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Science 449-459 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Education ^ 460-475 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Philosophy 476-491 



LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL BOOKS USED 
IN THE TEXT 



Adam. Paul : Vues d'Amerique. 1906. 

Abdy, E. 8. : Journal of Residence and Tour in the United States. 

London, 1835. 
Archer. William A. : America To-Day. New York, 1899. 
Arfwedson, C. D. : The United States and Canada. London, 1834. 
Arnold. Matthew: Civilization in the United States. Boston, 1888. 
Ashe, Thomas : Travels in America. London, 1808. 
Baumgartner. A. : Erinnerungen aus Amerika. Zurich, 1906. 
Blouet, Paul (,Max O'Rell) : A Frenchman in America. New 

York, 1891. 
Broecklin. August : Wanderleben, Leipzig, 1902. 
Bourget, Paul: Outre-Mer. New York, 1895. 
Bradbury, John: Travels in the Interior of America. London, 

1819. 
Bremer, Fredrika : The Homes of the New World. London, 1853. 
Brooks, John Graham : As Others See Us. New York, 1910. 
Brothers, Thomas : The United States of North America. London 

1840. 
Bryce, James : The American Commonwealth. New York, 1917. 
Buckingham, James S. : The Eastern and Western States of 

America. London, 1S42. 
Burne-Jones, Sir Philip : Dollars and Democracy. New York, 

1904. 
Combe, George C. : American Notes. 1838-41. 
Cooley, Charles Horton : Social Organization. New York, 1910. 
De Constant, Paul H. B. D'Estournelles : America and Her Prob- 
lems. New York, 1915. 
De Lingereux, Saint- Andre : L'Amerique. Paris, 1904, 
De Rousiers, Paul : La Vie Amerlcaine. Paris, 1892. 
De Tocqueville. Alexis : Democracy in America. New York, 1900. 
Dickens, Charles : American Notes. 
Dilnot, Frank : The New America. New York, 1919. 
L^ugard. Marie : La Societe Americaine, Paris, 1896. 
Faithfull, Emily : Three Visits to the United States. New York, 

1884. 
Faux, W. : Memorable Days in America. London. 1823. 

XI 



XII Principal Books Used in the Text 

Fearon, Henry B. : Journey Through th^ Eastern and Western 
States. London, 1818. 

Felton, Mrs. : American Life. Leeds, 1843. 

Francis, Alexander : Americans. London, 1901, 

Freeman, Edward A. : Some Impressions of the United States. 
New York 1883. 

Fulda, Ludwig : Amerikanischen Eindrucke. Cotta, 1906. 
GrifBn, Sir Lepel : The Great Republic. London, 1884. 
Grund, Francis J. : The Americans. Boston, 1837. 
Hintrager, Dr. : Wie leht und arbeitet Man in den Vereinigten 

Staaten. Brentano, 1904. 
Huert, Jules : En Amerique. Paris, 1904. 
Hunt, Gaillard : Life in America One Hundred Years Ago. New 

York, 1914. 
Kipling, Rudyard : American Notes. New York, 1889. 
Klein, Felix Abbe : Au Pays de la Vie Intense. Paris, 1904. 
Klein, Felix Abbe : L'Amerique-de demain. Paris, 1910. 
Knortz Karl : Aus der Transatlantischen Gesellschaft. Leipzig, 

1887. 
Lawson, W. R. : American Industries. New York, 1903. 
Le Bon, Gustave : The Crowd. London, 1903. 
Le Roux, Hugues : Business and Love. New York, 1903. 
Lowell, Lawrence A. : Public Opinion and Popular Government. 

New York, 1914. 
Martineau. Harriet : Society in America. London, 1837. 
Moreau, G. : L'Envers des Etats Unis. Paris, 1903. 
Muirliead, James F. : The Land of Contrasts.. London, 1898. 
Munsterberg, Hugo. The Americans. New York, 1904. 
Neve, I. L. : Charakterzuge des Amerikanischen Volker. Leipzig, 

1903. 
Nevers, Edmond de: L'Ame Americaine. Paris, 1900. 
Ostrogorski, M. : Democracy and the Party System. New York, 

1910. 
Regnier, M. : Au Pays de I'Avenir. Paris, 1906. 
Reynolds, Joan B. : The Americans. London, 1907. 
Royce, Josiah: William James and other Essays. New York, 

1911. 
Smith, Rev. Sydney : Essays Social and Political. London. 
Soissons, de S. C. : A Parisian in America. Boston, 1896. 
Stead. W. T. : The Americanization of the World. New York, 

1902. 
Steevens. G. W. : Land of the Dollar. London, 1897. 



Principal Books Used in the Text xiii 

Trollope, Frances M. : Domestic Manners of the Americans. New 

York, 1904. 
Trollope, Anthony : North America. New York, 1862. 
Van Dyke, Henry : The Spirit of America. New York, 1910. 
Von Polenz, W. : Das Land der Zukunft. Brentano, New York 
Wagner, Charles: My Impressions of America. New York, 1906. 
Wells, H. G. : The Future in America. New York, 1906. 
Wortley, Lady Emmeline: Travels in the United States, 1849-51. 

New York, 1851. 
Zimmeimaiin. Karl : Onkel Sam. Stuttgart, 1904. 



DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA. 



CHAPTER I. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 

AMERICANS. 

AMERICANS POSSESS A STRONG INSTINCT OF PUGNACITY 
—THEY ARE SELF-ASSERTIVE AND BOASTFUI^-BLIND 
TO OBVIOUS SHORTCOMINGS— SELF-RELIANT— MANI- 
FEST STRONG ANTIPATHIES— CHARACTER OF AMER- 
ICAN WIT AND HUMOR— CONSERVATISM— ALTRUISM— 
IDEALISM— MENTAL AND MORAL TEMPERAMENT— 
OVER-STRENUOUS LIFE LEADS TO DISCONTENT AND 
RESTLESSNESS. 

Foreign critics seem to agree in the opinion 
that the Americans possess psychological character- 
istics different from those of any other people. ''No 
one who has traveled, as I have," says Alexander 
Francis, ''in Australia and South Africa as well as 
in America, can fail to realize that the American, 
in a sense which does not apply to British colonists, 
has been made over into a new man by the new 
mode of life which he has embraced, and the new 
government which he obeys, in his new land — a 
man who acts upon new ideas, new principles and 
new prejudices in the new world which he has 

(1! 



2 Democracy In America 

made his own — a man in whom the climate and 
other potent factors of his new physical environ- 
ment have wrought a new psychological type, while 
the more subtle influences of a new continent, 
which he has almost to himself, and in which he has 
long been kept practically free from contact and 
entanglement with the Old World, were producing 
a type intellectually and morally new."* 

In seeking to define the peculiarities of this 
new type, we are led to note, in the first place, that 
one of the characteristics of the Americans, con- 
spicuous in all Teutonic races, and especially ac- 
centuated in the English, is a very strong degree of 
pugnacity. 

This has been developed among the Teutonic 
races in their long history of warfare, and in their 
struggle for existence in a climate which requires 
strenuous physical and mental energy. The English 
had this instinct intensified in them by their life 
upon the sea which cultivated daring and a love of 
adventure. English adventurers sailed to all quar- 
ters of the earth, founded colonies, and adapted 
themselves readily to the most hostile environrtients. 
The English gentleman of means, who might have 
spent his leisure in the clubs of Pall Mall, or in 
shooting grouse in Scotland, assembled his gun and 
knapsack, and set sail for some land across the sea, 
where he took up life anew amidst primeval forests, 
and found delight in the society of tigers, apes, 
crocodiles, snakes, ants, flies, mosquitoes, and sav- 
age men. If every Englishman had not been a Rob- 

* p. 24. 



Psychological Characteristics 3 

inson Crusoe, Daniel De Foe could not have written 
the celebrated novel by that title. The Englishman 
seems to have acquired a natural inclination to at- 
tack wild forests, wild animals, and wild men. He 
is never happy unless he is confronted by som.e- 
thing hazardous which arouses his pugnacity. 
Ruskin once remarked that the hunting instinct in 
the Englishman was so strong that, if he saw an 
angel coming down from Heaven, his first impulse 
would be to get a gun and shoot it. 

Well, the English who colonized America 
brought along with them a large bump of pug- 
nacity, and they found here plenty of exercise for it 
in attacking mighty forests, and the wild beasts and 
men thereof, in combatting the unfriendly winds 
of winter, and the agues, fevers, and chigres of 
summer. In the absence of a police system, every 
immigrant had to be his own protector, of life and 
property. He therefore became handy with the 
gun, the pistol, and his fist. He liked any kind of 
fight, down to a dog fight or chicken fight, and was 
himself rather inclined to fight upon small provoca- 
tion, and to boast of his prowess. Mrs. Trollope 
tells of a sturdy southern stage-driver she once met 
who could always, at a moment's warning, "whip 
his weight in wild cats."* It is related that 
when Napoleon asked Talleyrand what he 
thought of the Americans, the reply was, ''Sire, ce 
sont des fiers cochons, et des cochons fiers." The 
Americans have to thank their pugnacity, more than 
anything else, for their success in conquering this 

* p. 278. 



4 Democracy In America 

vast continent, and in exploiting its resoa -ces. It 
has been the secret behind our strenuous industrial 
life, our bold and gigantic adventures, our fierce 
competition, and our immense production of wealth. 
It is now beginning to switch over into the realm of 
the moral world in an aggressive and indomitable 
attack upon vice, corruption, ignorance and folly, 
as witness our crusade against slavery, whisky, the 
political boss, child labor, and so on up to the war 
of our pragmatic philosophy against the intellect- 
ualistic abstraction of the past century. Let us 
hope that our fighting instinct will long live and 
flourish in this new realm. 

Self-assertion is a characteristic of the Ameri- 
cans which naturally accompanies their strong pug- 
nacity. In a new country of democratic institutions, 
no man inherits his fortune, but must earn it. 
Every tub stands on its own bottom. Hence the 
very streriupus elbowing, and treading upon tender 
feet, to get to the front. The pioneer is a bold 
gambler; he is eager for a chance at a quick 
fortune, and is willing to risk in its pursuit every- 
thing that he possesses. When he achieves his 
fortune he is very proud of it ; also he is very proud 
of the achievement of his community and state, 
since he feels that he has had a share in it. He 
is^ therefore, much given to boasting. Of this trait 
De Tocqueville says: 

*'In the United States the inhabitants were 
thrown as but yesterday upon the soil which they 
now occupy, and they brought neither customs nor 
traditions with them there; they meet each other 
ior the first time with no previous acquaintance; 



Psychological Characteristics 5 

in short, the instinctive love of their country can 
scarcely exist in their minds; but every one takes as 
zealous an interest in the affairs of his township, 
his county, and of the whole state, as if they 
were his own, because every one, in his sphere, 
takes an active part in the government of society. 

'The lower orders in the United States are 
alive to the perception of the influence exercised 
by the general prosperity upon their own welfare ; 
and simple as this observation is, it is one which 
is but too rarely made by the people. But in Amer- 
ica the people regard this prosperity as the result 
of its own exertions; the citizen looks upon the 
fortune of the public as his private interest, and he 
cooperates in its success, not so much from a sense 
of pride or of duty, as from what I shall venture 
to term cupidity. 

''It is unnecessary to study the institutions and 
the history of the Americans in order to discover 
the truth of this remark, for their manners render 
it sufficiently evident. As the American partici- 
pates in all that is done in his country, he thinks 
himself obliged to defend whatever may be cen- 
sured; for it is not only his country which is at- 
tacked upon these occasions, but it is himself. The 
consequence is, that his national pride resorts to a 
thousand artifices, and to all the petty tricks of 
individual vanity. 

"Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary 
intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of 
the Americans. A stranger may be very well in- 
clined to praise many of the institutions of their 
country, but he begs permission to blame some of 



6 Democracy In America 

the peculiarities which he observes — a permission 
which is, however, inexorably refused. America is 
therefore a free country, in which, lest anybody 
should be hurt by your remarks, you are not al- 
lowed to speak freely of private individuals, or of 
the State, of the citizens or of the authorities, of 
public or of private undertakings, or, in short, of 
anything at all, except it be of the climate and 
the soil; and even then Americans will be found 
ready to defend either the one or the other, as if 
they had been contrived by the inhabitants of the 
country.* * * * 

*'For the last fifty years no pains have been 
spared to convince the inhabitants of the Unitea 
States that they constitute the only religious, en- 
lightened, and free people. They perceive that, 
for the present, their own democratic institutions 
succeed, whilst those of other countries fail: hence 
they conceive an overwhelming opinion of their su- 
periority, and they are not very remote from be- 
lieving themselves to belong to a distinct race of 
mankind. "t * * h: 

**A11 free nations are vainglorious, but national 
pride is not displayed by all in the same manner. 
The Americans in their intercourse with strangers 
appear impatient of the smallest censure and in- 
satiable of praise. The most slender eulogium is 
acceptable to them ; the most exalted seldom con- 
tents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort 
praise, and if you resist their entreaties they fall to 
praising themselves. It would seem as if, doubt- 
ing their own merit, they wished to have it con- 

* I, 248. t I, 400 



Psychological Characteristics . 7 

stantly exhibited before their eyes. Their vanity is 
not only greedy, but restless and jealous; it will 
grant nothing, whilst it demands everything, but is 
ready to beg and to quarrel at the same time. If 
I say to an American that the country he lives in is 
a fine one, *Ay,' he replies, 'there is not its fellow in 
the world.' If I applaud the freedom which its 
inhabitants enjoy, he answers, 'Freedom is a fine 
thing, but few nations are worthy to enjoy it.* If 
I remark the purity of morals which distinguishes 
the United States, 'I can imagine,' says he, 'that a 
stranger, who has been struck by the corruption 
of all other nations, is astonished at the difference.' 
At length I leave him to the contemplation of him- 
self; but he returns to the charge, and does not 
desist till he has got rne to repeat all I had just been 
saying. It is impossible to conceive a more trouble- 
some or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even 
those who are disposed to respeci it."* 

Dickens paid his respects to our bragging pro- 
pensity in his Martin Chuzzlewit, and put it into 
the mouth of Mark Tapley to remark that the 
Americans were born crowing. 

By way of explaining why the English and 
French do not brag like the Americans, Paul Blouet 
asserts that, "An Englishman or Frenchman will 
never ask you what you think of England or France. 
The fact is, they both care little or nothing for the 
foreigner's opinion. The Frenchman does not doubt 
that his country is beyond competition. If he enter 
into the subject at all, it is to congratulate the 
stranger upon coming to visit it. 

* II, 236. 



8 Democracy In America . 

'The Englishman makes less noise over it. In 
his provokingly calm manner, he is perfectly per- 
suaded that his England is the first country in the 
world, and that everybody admits it, and the idea 
of asking an outsider for his opinion of it would 
never enter his head. He would think it so ridicu- 
lous, so amusing, so grotesque, that any one should 
tell him England was not at the head of all na- 
tions, that he would not take the trouble to resent 
it. He would pity the person, and the matter would 
go no further."* 

Foreign critics, however, are very much mis- 
taken in their notion that bragging is altogether 
peculiar to the American peop^le. The English, the 
French, and the German brag quite as much as the 
Americans, but in a style which is particularly their 
own. Sometimes they brag even in the American 
style and beat it. For instance, H. B. Fearon tells 
this story of *two Englishmen and an American trav- 
eling in a stage from Boston in 1818: 'They (the 
Englishmen) indulged their patriotism by abusing 
everything American. The butter was not so good 
as the English, nor the beef — nor the peaches — nor 
the laws — nor the people — nor the climate — nor 
the country. Their fellow-traveler was displeased, 
but he remained silent. At length there came on a 
tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. He 
then burst forth, boiling with rage — There d — you, 
I guess that thunder and lightning is as good as 
any you have in England.'"* 

* p. 16. i p. 103. 



Psychological Characteristics 9 

The most recent English critic of America, 
Frank Dilnot, in contrasting the food served at 
breakfast in England and America, ruthlessly 
Vv^ounds our pride and displays an amazing ignor- 
ance, when he asserts that the Am.erican bacon is 
greatly inferior to that of England. ^'During eigh- 
teen months in this country," he says, "I have met 
scores of travelling Englishmen, many of them dis- 
tinguished in their various walks of life, and it is 
a fact worth putting down that rarely has our con- 
versation come to an end without a heart-rending 
word about American bacon. * * * America 
is a great nation but it has not yet learned much 
about bacon. * * * It is one of the few serious 
dividing lines between the two nations. Not to put 
too fine a point upon it, these delicate looking wafer_ 
like strips are to an Englishman on the tough side. 
Also they lack flavor. I am blunt about this. The 
matter is not one to be trifled with."* 

Mr. Dilnot evidently never heard of the cele 
brated bacon and hams of Virginia, and had he 
ever tasted them he would ever afterwards have 
been ashamed to mention his English bacon. 

The disdainful criticism of everything Ameri- 
can by many English, French and German writers 
is only a thinly disguised form of bragging. For 
example, Rudyard Kipling betrays throughout his 
American Notes a cheap braggadocio spirit in the 
scornful upturning of his nose' at everything Amer- 
ican, not excepting those grand works in America 
which are not the creation of man but of God. 

*p. 18. 



10 Democracy In America 

John Graham Brooks thinks that the bragging 
propensity of Americans is disappearing at least 
from some classes. ''But/' says he, "for our con- 
tinued shaming, a noisy and undisciplined contin- 
gent carries on the work of discrediting our coun- 
try. On ships, in miscellaneous hotels and pensions 
in Europe, this plague still rages. A veteran con- 
ductor of Americans through Europe says, 'I have 
my chief trouble with this infernal lugging of Amer- 
ica, along with them. I practically never get a 
party without some few who stir up bad blood by 
loud talk about "the way we do things in the 
United States,'* and the women are as bad as the 
men. The Italians and the Swiss are good-natured 
about it; the English despise it, and if they can, 
avoid us altogether; the "French shrug their should- 
ers and say, "What can you expect? they are 
Americans." ' The conductor adds, 'I have often 
seen both French and English, when inquiring for 
rooms at pensions or small hotels, turn away upon 
learning that Americans were there.' 

"An American who had to spend years m 
Italy admits that he changed his pension three 
times because he couldn't stand *so many kinds of 
bragging about his country. Four out of five of us 
can hold our own in decent behavior with other 
nationalities, but there is always that awful fifth 
to make mischief.' In one pension from which he 
felt himself driven, he says, a mother came with 
her three daughters. On their first entrance into 
the parlor in which several persons were reading 
or writing, one of the daughters said, 'Did you ever 



Psychological Characteristics 11 

see such absurd ways of heating a house? It is 
almost as bad as those stuffy English grates. Why, 
in America — ' *I didn't stop for the rest of the 
sentence, I hurried out to find some place where I 
should be free from this most intolerable way of 
making ourselves disagreeable on our travels.' "* 

Charles Wagner, author of "The Simple Life," 
which had such a wide sale in America, claims to 
have met some Americans who were not over-sensi- 
tive to foreign comment. He says, **What I shall 
call 'the better American' is certainly animated by 
the most ardent desire to recognize the national 
faults and imperfections, in order to set about their 
correction."* Of the decline in the brag- 
ging habit of the Americans, Alexander Francis 
says, **The unqualified denunciation of the ills of 
the body-politic which have filled the land during 
recent years, and the spectacular legislative meas- 
ures proposed as a remedy, have had so potent an 
effect upon the popular mind that, in America, 
bragging is in danger of becoming a lost art. Two 
distinguished Oxford professors whom I met, one in 
New England and the other in California, said to 
me, in amazement and not without regret, that 
during many weeks spent in the country they had 
not heard a single brag. My experience has not 
been quite as happy as theirs, perhaps because I 
have gone farther afield; but candor compels me 
to say that, in America, I met fewer braggarts than 
I should have done had I been under the British 

*p. 197. tP. 229. 



12 Democracy In America 

flag, and that of *a certain condescension' I saw 
nothing at all."* 

Educated Americans, as educated men of ev- 
ery other country, know how to value those precious 
evidences of the culture of a people which consist 
of their traditions and monuments. In new coun- 
tries which lack these evidences, culture is apt to 
be estimated by the possession of material com- 
forts and conveniences, and the people are apt, not 
only to be blind to the higher evidences of culture, 
but to despise them. American culture has the 
fault of being new and raw, and the mass of unen- 
lightened Americans have not yet come to appre- 
ciate the great inferiority, in many respects, of their 
own country to the richer and older culture of 
Europe. As the Americans accumulate more tra- 
ditions, and more monuments of culture of their 
own, they will have a higher appreciation of those 
of other countries, and will display, let us hope, a 
more becoming modesty in comparing their own 
achievements with those of the Old World. The 
contrast between the culture of America and of the 
Old World is much like that between the culture of 
the West and the East in our own country. The 
West, with its greater individuality and initiative, 
is inclined to underestimate the East which has 
more conservatism and more respect for tradition. 
Each section has its distinctive virtues which the 
other could imitate with profit. 

One of the misfortunes of too much self-asser- 
tion is a tendency to become blind to one's own 

* p. 13. 



Psychological Characteristics 13 

shortcomings; and the American people have cer- 
tainly lost much in the way of incentive to higher 
culture by a too great satisfaction with their exist- 
ing status. Upon this weakness of the Americans, 
Matthew Arnold remarks that ''the Americans 
seem, in certain matters, to have agreed, as a peo- 
ple, to deceive themselves, to persuade themselves 
that they have what they have not, to cover the 
defects in their civilization by boasting, to fancy 
that they well and truly solve, not only the political 
and social problem, but the human problem too. 
One would say that they do really hope to find in 
talk and inflated sentiment a substitute for that 
real sense of elevation which human nature, as I 
have said, instinctively craves — and a substitute 
which may do as well as the genuine article. The 
thrill of awe, which Goethe pronounces to be the 
best thing humanity has, they would fain create by 
proclaiming themselves at the top of their voices to 
be 'the greatest nation upon earth,' by assuring one 
another, in the language of their national historian, 
that 'American democracy proceeds in its ascent as 
uniformly and majestically as the laws of being, 
and is as certain as the decrees of eternity.' "* 
*~ * * "And by such self-deception they 
shut against themselves the door of improvement, 
and do their best to make the reign of das Gemeine 
eternal. In what concerns the solving of the po- 
litical and social problem they see clear and think 
straight; in what concerns the higher civilization 
chey live in a fool's paradise."* 

*I). 183. tP. 189. 



14 Democracy In America 

Self-reliance, or self-determination as Miinster- 
berg calls it, is a necessary outgrowth of a people 
who are pugnacious and self-assertive. The Amer- 
icans are perhaps distinguished above all other 
people in their aptitude for isolation. They do not 
hesitate to plant themselves in the midst of a for- 
est, prairie, or pile of mountains, and there live 
alone for years before they have a neighbor. In 
my youth I once heard a preacher remark that it 
was not good for a man to live so isolated that he 
could not hear the bark of his neighbor's dog. The 
farmers of America are not gregarious, and do not 
have to live in villages like the farmers of Russia 
and southern Europe. Isolation throws every man 
upon his own resources, and develops a remarkable 
degree of independence. 

Van Dyke regards, as "the first and most po- 
tent factor in the soul of the American people, the 
spirit of self-reliance. This was the dominant and 
formative factor of their history. It was the in- 
ward power which animated and sustained them in 
their first struggles and efforts. It was deepened 
by religious conviction and intensified by practical 
experience. It took shape in political institutions, 
declarations, constitutions. It rejected foreign 
guidance and control, and fought against all ex- 
ternal domination. It assumed the right of self- 
determination, and took for granted the power of 
self-development. In the ignorant and noisy it 
was aggressive, independent, cocksure, and boast- 
ful. In the thoughtful and prudent it was grave, 
firm, resolute, and inflexible. It has persisted 



Psychological Characteristics 15 

through all the changes and growth of two centur- 
ies, and it remains today the most vital and irreduc- 
ible quality in the soul of America, — the spirit of 
self-reliance."* 

The philosophy of Emerson is a complete in- 
terpretation of the American characteristics of pug- 
nacity, self-assertion, and self-reliance. It glorifies 
the man who can stand alone, who has the power 
of isolation, who acts upon intuition, and has the 
courage to do something unconventional. It is the 
prophecy of American innovation and invention. 

The Americans have a strong instinct of repul- 
sion. This is bound up with their self-assertion and 
and high pride. They have a disposition to antag- 
onize with vigor anything which stands in the way 
of any object they seek to realize. They are strong 
partisans in business, in love, in politics, in religion, 
and in sport. Their ardor for their own faction is 
equalled only by their feeling of antagonism for 
every rival faction. In the competition of trade, in 
political strife, and in sectarian rivalry, this repul- 
sive instinct has had its greatest incentive. In re- 
cent years, I am thankful to note, it has tended to 
find some outlet in feelings of indignation and dis- 
gust at political and social corruption. 

Americans are inclined to pride themselves on 
their wit and humor, but, as a matter of fact, these 
scintillations of the mind have been very slow in 
developing, and have not been conspicuously evi- 
dent to the foreign observers. Neither the Puritans 
nor other early immigrants manifested any aptitude 

*p. 40. 



16 Democracy In America 

in this line. Life was too hard, too serious, and 
too dull to kindle these genial flames. Wit and 
humor begin to sparkle in a people only after they 
have gained a certain mastery over nature, and a 
certain degree of leisure. They are the flashes of 
the mind after its serious work is done, or of a 
mind whose conscious strength gives it a playtul 
attitude toward its tasks. 

American humor had its beginning in fish 
stories, and perhaps its flavor somewhat therefrom. 
When the pioneer fisherman, hunter, or axeman re- 
turned at night to the cam.p fire or cabin fire, he 
lighted his pipe, and related his adventures in true 
Munchausen style. Rivalry in story telling led to 
exaggerations, and these led to jokes on the story 
teller. From this communion of the pioneer around 
the camp fire, there developed two universal char- 
acteristics of the Americans. First, a love for, and 
aptitude for story telling, and second, a disposition 
to tell a story at the expense of a friend. As wide- 
spread as these characteristics came to be, they 
were rarely manifested except in the conversation 
of intimate friends around the domestic hearth. 
Men who undertook the task of writing books, or 
delivering public addresses, or sermons, were ex- 
tremely matter-of-fact. They discussed only serious 
subjects, and these were enlivened by no flashes of 
wit or humor. 

Until recent years American wit and humor 
were largely confined to intimate circles, to after- 
dinner speeches, and to obscure corners of the 
almanac, the newspapers, and the magazine. They 



Psychological Characteristics 17 

were sometimes conspicuous in the stump speaking 
of presidential campaigns. A foreigner might have 
traveled about in America a good deal without ob- 
serving the all-pervading humor of the people. 
Captain Hall, who visited America in 1827, was 
everywhere impressed with our absence of humor. 
When he reached as far west as the Mississippi, he 
says, he met a few men who "sometimes under- 
stood a joke." Charles Dickens said of the Amer- 
icans in 1843, 'They certainly are not a humorous 
people." (American Notes.) James S. Bucking- 
ham, who visited the United States in 1842. gives 
us a sample of a kind of American humor which 
has always been very common. He was journeying 
along one of our western rivers where he heard of 
**a man so dreadfully afflicted with the ague, from 
sleeping in the fall on its banks, that he shook 
to such a degree as to shake all the teeth out of 
his head. This was matched by another, who said 
there was a man from his State, who had gone to 
Illinois to settle, and the ague seized him so terri- 
bly hard, that he shook all the clothes from his 
body, and could not keep a garment whole, for it 
unravelled the very web, thread by thread, till it 
was all destroyed. The climax was capped, how- 
ever, by the declaration of a third, that a friend of 
his who had settled on the banks of the Hlinois, and 
built a most comfortable dwelling for himself and 
family, was seized with an ague, which grew worse 
and worse, until its fits became so violent, that 
they at length shook the whole house about his 
ears, and buried him in its ruins."* 

*II, 22. 



18 Democracy In America 

Within the last few decades, however, Amer- 
ican wit and humor ha^^e obtruded themselves more 
upon the public, finding expression in the cartoons 
of newspapers, in short stories, in the drama, th-e 
motion pictures, and in ordinary conversation. It 
is to be remembered that Mark Twain gained his 
notoriety as a humorist after the time of Dickens' 
visit to America. Paul Blouet, writing in 1892, 
says, "There is no country where you hear so many 
good anecdotes, and no country where they are so 
well told."* William Archer gives the fol- 
lowing sample of American humor: ''On board 
one of the Florida steamships, which have to be 
built with exceedingly light draught to get over the 
frequent shallows of the rivers, an Englishman ac- 
costed the captain with the remark, 'I understand, 
captain, that you think nothing of steaming across 
a meadow where there's been a, heavy fall of dew.' 
'Well, I don't know about that,' replied the captain, 
'but it's true we have sometimes to send a man 
ahead with a watering pot.' "t De Constant, 
writing in 1915, says that, "American jokes 
spare nobody. Audiences enjoy them immensely 
and receive them with loud and prolonged laughter. 
No speech is a success without a tew caustic allu- 
sions delivered with the utmost seriousness. Here 
is another example. It was in April. 1911, at the 
time when all the newspapers were talking about 
war with Mexico. It was inevitable, they said, 
though in reality no sensible person wanted it. The 
eminent orator who gave me a public welcome had 

* p. 108. t p. 83. 



Psychological Characteristics 19 

recently returned, like myself, from the Texas fron- 
tier. He had read in the newspapers, like every- 
body else, that the two armies facing each other 
at El Paso were on the point of opening fire, and 
that it was only a question of hours. He had de- 
cided to wait, he said, so as to see the fighting. 
Nothing happened on the first day, or the second, 
or the third ; and on inquiring as to the cause of the 
delay, he found it was because the cinematograph 
operator had not arrived."* 

Of American humor, Miinsterberg writes as 
follows: 

**We could not speak of political or intellectual 
life without emphasizing this irrepressible humor, 
but we must not forget it for a moment in speak- 
ing of social life, for its influence pervades every 
social situation. The only question is whether it 
is the humor which overcomes every disturbance 
of the social equilibrium and so restores the con- 
sciousness of free and equal self-assertion, or whether 
it is this consciousness which fosters and seeks ex- 
pression in a good-natured lack of respect. No im- 
moderation, no improper presumption, and no pom- 
posity can survive the humorous comment, and the 
American does not wait long for this. The soap- 
bubble is pricked amid general laughter, and equal- 
ity is restored. Whether it is in a small matter or 
whether in a question of national importance, a 
latent humor pervades all social life. 

'*Not a single American newspaper appears in 
the morning without some political joke or whim- 
sical comment, a humorous story, or a satirical 



* p. 187. 




20 Democracy In America 

article ; and those who are familiar with American 
papers and then look into the European newspaper, 
find the greatest contrast to be in the absence of 
humor. And the same is true of daily life, the 
American is always ready for a joke and has one 
always on his lips, however dry the subject of dis- 
cussion may be, and however diverse the social 
'position' of those present. A happy humorous turn 
will remind them all that they are equal fellows- 
citizens, and that they are not to take their differ- 
ent functions in life too solemnly, nor to suppose 
that their varied outward circumstances introduce 
any real inequality. As soon as Americans hear a 
good story, they come at once to an under- 
standing, and it is well-known that many political 
personalities have succeeded because of their wit, 
even if its quantity was more than its quality. 

''American humor is most typically uttered 
with great seriousness; the most biting jest or the 
most extravagant nonsense is brought out so de- 
murely as not at all to suggest the real intent. The 
American is a master of this, and often remarks 
the Englishman's incapacity to follow him. The 
familiar American criticism of their English cous- 
ins is, in spite of Punch, certainly exaggerated — 
as if there were no humor at all in the country 
which produced Dickens. But it cannot be denied 
that American humor today is fresher and more 
spontaneous. And this may be in large part due to 
the irrepressible feeling of equality which so car- 
ries humor into every social sphere. The assurance 
of this feeling also makes the American ready to 



RSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS 21 

caricature himself or his very best friend. But it 
is necessary especially to observe the masses, the 
participants in a festival, citizens on election day, 
popular crowds on the streets or in halls, in order 
to feel how all-powerful their humor is."* 

It has been observed that American humor 
finds expression on occasions of the greatest seri- 
ousness. Emily Faithfull says, '1 have seen the 
Rev. H. W. Beecher's congregation convulsed with 
laughter at a comic story, told during the Sunday 
morning services, with all that preacher's well- 
known humor and dramatic action."! Amer- 
ican preachers who have a keen sense of 
humor do not hesitate to give it vent in the pulpit, 
and they can do so without in the least destroying 
the sense of reverence in their congregations. 

The prevalence of American humor is, without 
doubt, due in part to the democratic spirit and 
good-fellowship which democracy promotes. Ev- 
erybody in the world knows how impossible it is 
to jest with a person one does not like. The fact 
that a man jokes or plays with another is a sure 
sign of their friendly relationship. American humor 
has perhaps gained some increased force from the 
self-reliance, independence, and conscious strength 
of the people to master whatever task comes to 
hand. It is known that Abraham Lincoln, in the 
midst of the most trying burdens and perplexities, 
would often tell a story to relieve the tension and 
worry, and give him a firmer grasp upon his prob- 

* p. 544 t P- 367. 



22 Democracy In America 

lem. Most successful men in America have this 
knack of unbending. 

Another notable characteristic of the Ameri- 
cans is self-control or inhibition. Their self-reliance 
and practical experience have inclined them always 
to act upon reason, to stop, look and listen before 
going ahead. Conversation in America consists in 
a large measure of argument upon the practicability 
or advisability of some project. Americans, there- 
lore, are not easily stampeded; they are not im- 
pulsive, and are not swayed by passion. With all 
their individuality, and love of experiment, they 
hold fast to fundamental ideas and principles which 
have once taken hold of them. They are conser- 
vative. "When once an opinion has spread over 
the country," says De Tocqueville, "and struck 
root there, it would seem that no power on earth 
is strong enough to eradicate it. In the United 
States, the general principles in religion, philoso- 
phy, morality, and even in politics, do not vary, or 
at least are only modified by a hidden and often 
an imperceptible process; even the grossest prej- 
udices are obliterated with incredible slowness, 
amidst the continual friction of men and things."* 

"The United States," says Paul Bourget, "even 
after allowing for the socialistic demonstrations of 
the German immigrants, appears to the traveler to 
be the least revolutionary of countries; the one 
where constitutional problems are the most defin- 
itely and stringently regulated. It is a conservative 

♦II. 270. 



Psychological Characteristics 23 

democracy — that is to say, exactly the contrary of 
ours."* 

The people of the United States are generally 
credited with being altruistic. In the pioneer days 
when population was scattered and labor scarce, 
neighbors were obliged to help each other in build- 
ing houses, in harvesting crops, husking grain, in 
ministering to the sick, and in burying the dead. In 
this way they grew^ up with a disposition to help 
each other in trouble. 

**When men feel a natural compassion for their 
mutual sufferings," says De Tocqueville, ''when they 
are brought together by easy and frequent inter- 
course, and no sensitive feelings keep them asunder 
— it may readily be supposed that they will lend 
assistance to one another whene\^er it is needed. 
When an American asks for co-operation of his fel- 
low-citizens it is seldom refused, and I have often 
seen it afforded spontaneously and with great good 
will. If an accident happens on the highway, every- 
body hastens to help the sufferer; if some great and 
sudden calamity befalls a family, the purses of a 
thousand strangers are at once willingly opened, and 
small but numerous donations pour in to relieve their 
distress. It often happens amongst the most civilized 
nations of the globe that a poor wretch is as friend- 
less in the midst of a crowd as the savage in his 
wilds ; this is hardly ever the case in the United 
States. The Americans, who are always cold and 
often coarse in their manners, seldom show insensi- 

*p. 417. 



24 Democracy In America 

bility; and if they do not proffer services eagerly, yet 
they do not refuse to render them. 

"All this is not in contradiction to what I have 
said before on the subject of individualism. The two 
things are so far from combatting each other, that I 
can see how they agree. Equality of conditions, whilst 
it makes men feel their independence, shows them 
their own weakness ; they are free, but exposed to a 
thousand accidents; and experience soon teaches them 
that, although they do not habitually require the 
assistance of others, a time almost always comes when 
they cannot do without it. We constantly see m 
Europe that men of the same profession are ever- 
ready to assist each other ; they are all exposed to the 
same ills, and that is enough to teach them to seek 
mutual preservation, however hard-hearted and self- 
ish they may otherwise be. When one of them falls 
into danger, from which the ethers may save him by 
a slight transient sacrifice or a sudden effort, they 
do not fail to make the attempt. Not that they are 
deeply interested in his fate; for if, by chance, their 
exertions are unavailing, they immediately forget the 
object of them, and return to their own business ; but 
a sort of tacit and almost involuntary agreement has 
been passed between them, by which each one owes 
to the others a temporary support which he may 
claim for himself in turn. Extend to a people the 
remark here applied to a class, and you will under- 
stand my meaning. A similar covenant exists in fact 
between all the citizens of a democracy; they all feel 
themselves subject to the same weakness and the 
same dangers; and their interest, as well as their 



Psychological Characteristics 25 

sympathy, makes it a rule with them to lend each 
other mutual assistance when required. The more 
e iual social conditions become, the more do men 
display this reciprocal disposition to oblige each 
other. In democracies no great benefits are con- 
ferred, but good offices are constantly rendered; a 
man seldom displays self-devotion, but all men are 
ready to be of service to one another."* * * * 

"I must say that I have often seen Americans 
make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; 
and I have remarked a hundred instances in which 
they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to 
each other. The free institutions Vv^hich the inhab- 
itants of the United States possess, and the political 
rights of which they make so much use, remind every 
citizen, and in a thousand ways, that he lives in 
society. They every instant impress upon his mind 
the notion that it is the duty, as well as the interest 
of men, to make themselves useful to their fellow- 
creatures; and as he sees no particular ground of 
animosity to them, since he is never either their 
master or their slave, his heart readily leans to the 
side of kindness. Men attend to the interests of the 
public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice; what 
was intentional becomes an instinct; and by dint of 
working for the good of one's fellow citizens, the 
habit and the taste for serving them is at length 
acquired."! 

This trait has not diminished with the years, if 
we may believe Henry Van Dyke when he says : *Tt 
is not an unkind country, this big republic, where the 

♦II. 186. tn. 112. 



26 Democracy In America 

manners are so 'free and easy,' the tempo of life so 
quick, the pressure of business so heavy and con- 
tinuous. The feeling of philanthropy in its broader 
sense, — the impulse which makes men inclined to 
help one another, to sympathize with the unfortunate, 
to lift a neighbor or a stranger out of a tight place, 
— good will, in short, — is in the blood of the people. 

''When their blood is heated, they are hard 
hitters, fierce fighters. But give them time to cool 
down, and they are generous peacemakers. Abra- 
ham Lincoln's phrase, 'With malice toward none, 
with charity for all' strikes the key-note. In the 
'wild concerns of ordinary life' they like to culti- 
vate friendly relations, to show neighborliness, to 
do the useful thing. 

"There is a curious word of approbation in 
the rural districts of Pennsylvania. When the 
country folk wish to express their liking for a man, 
they say, 'He is a very common person' — meaning 
not that he is low or vulgar, but approachable, 
sympathetic, kind to all. 

"Underneath the surface of American life, 
often rough and careless, there lies this widespread 
feeling; that human nature everywhere is made of 
the same stuff; that life's joys and sorrows are felt 
in the same way whether they are hidden under 
homespun and calico or under silk and broadcloth ; 
that it is every man's duty to do good and not evil 
to those who live in the world with him."* 

"Personally," says De Constant, "I cannot but 
bear witn.ess to the immense amount of good will 

* p. 273. 



Psychological Characteristics 27 

towards humanity, fermenting in the American 
mind."* 

Paul de Rousiers observed that "a class of 
great employers of labor is being formed almost all 
over the United States, whose devotion to public 
good and efficient action on society are such as to 
make them the members of a new aristocracy. Of 
course, if we mean by an aristocracy that collection 
of families hereditarily supplied with large estates 
and hereditarily occupying high office, such a thing 
cannot be found in the Union. But if we under- 
stand aristocracy to mean the groups of people who 
play a noble and disinterested part, consecrating a 
large share of the advantages they have been able 
to gain to public works — a selection of eminent and 
devoted men — ^that exists to a large extent in the 
land of the Yankee. 

*'The distinctive characteristic of this aristoc- 
racy is its anxiety to raise to its own level the social 
elements capable of rising. Every man who has 
reached the top of the ladder and generally holds 
out a helping hand to those who are struggling to 
climb to the summit, is a member of this aristoc- 
racy; and such men are not rare in the States."! 

James F. Muirhead, comparing America with 
other countries, thinks **The American is on the 
whole, more genially disposed to all and sundry. 
I do not say that he is capable of truer friendship 
or of greater sacrifices for a friend than the English- 

* p. 181. 



28 Democracy In America 

man ; but the window through which he looks out 
on humanity at large has panes of a ruddier hue."* 

Charles Wagner remarks that '*The hands of 
these people are not only creative of prodigies of 
industrial genius, they are also compassionate to 
the wounded and defeated. And their pity extends 
even to animals ; during all my travels in America, 
I did not once see a horse ill-treated." *** Of 
American hospitality, he says, ''This hospitality 
reminded me of all the beautiful things we read of 
the hospitality of the East, and of the tents of 
Abraham ; I have never experienced the brother- 
hood of man under a more gracious guise."** 

''The Americans," says Archer, "are said to 
be the busiest people in the world (I have doubt 
on that point) , but they have always leisure to give 
a stranger 'a good time.' "f 

"Much has been said of American hospitality; 
too much cannot possibly be said. "ft 

Of American generosity, Mlinsterberg offers 
the following comment: "Public munificence can- 
not be well gauged by statistics, and especially not 
in America. Most of the gifts are made quietly, 
and of course the small gifts which are never heard 
about outweigh the larger ones; and, nevertheless, 
one can have a fair idea of American generosity by 
considering only the large gifts made for public 
ends. If w^e consider only the gifts of money which 
are greater than one thousand dollars, and which 
go to public institutions, we have in the year 1903 

* p. 92 *** p 2'JO. ** p. 22.1. t P- 81 tt P- T8. 



Psychological Characteristics 29 

the pretty sum of $76,935,000. There can be no 
doubt that all the gifts under one thousand dollars 
would take an equal sum. 

"Of these public benefactions, $40,700,000 
went to educational institutions. In that year, for 
instance, Harvard University received in all S5,- 
000,000, Columbia University, $3,000,000, and Chi- 
cago University over $10,000,000; Yale received 
$600,000, and the negro institute in Tuskegee the 
same amount; Johns Hopkins and the University of 
Pennsylvania received about half a million each. 
Hospitals and similar institutions were remembered 
with $21,726,000; $7,583,000 were given to public 
libraries, $3,966,000 for religious purposes, and 
$2,927,000 to museums and art collections. Any 
one who lives in America know^s that this readiness 
to give is general, from the Carnegies and Rocke- 
fellers down to the workingmen, and that it is easy 
to obtain money from private purses for any good 
undertaking."* 

While Americans seem to be wholly absorbed 
in the practical and material things of life, they 
are, in fact, very much inclined to idealism. They 
are hero-worshippers, and they worship not what 
a man possesses, but the qualities which led to his 
possession. Their love for this kind of heroism is 
strikingly revealed in the essays of Emerson. It 
seems to be next to impossible to correct the erro- 
neous notion, generally prevalent abroad, that the 
Amei'ican people worship only the Almighty Dol- 

* p. 234. 



30 Democracy In America 

lar. Speaking of the Americans in his ''Martin 
Chuzzlewit," Dickens says: "All the cares, 
hopes, joys, affections, virtues and associations, 
seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever 
the chance contributions that fell into the slow cal- 
dron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and 
slag with dollars. Men were weighed by their 
dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was 
auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down 
for its dollars." 

In regard to our supposed worship of the dol- 
lar. Van Dyke says: "The dollar per se is no more 
almighty in America than it is anywhere else. It 
has just the same kind of power that the franc 
has in France, that the pound has in England : the 
power to buy the things that can be bought. There 
are foolish people in every country who worship 
money for its own sake. There are ambitious 
people in every country who worship money be- 
cause they have an exaggerated idea of what it 
can buy. But the characteristic thing in the atti- 
tude of the Americans toward money is this: not 
that they adore the dollar, but that they admire the 
energy, the will-power, by which the dollar has 
been won. 

"They consider the multi-millionaire much less 
as the possessor of an enormous fortune than as 
the successful leader of great enterprises in the 
world of affairs, a master of the steel industry, the 
head of a great railway system, the developer of 
the production of mineral oil, the organizer of large 
concerns which promote general prosperity. He 



Psychological Characteristics 31 

represents to them achievement, force, courage, 
tireless will-power. 

**A man who is very rich merely by inheritance, 
who has no manifest share in the activities of the 
country, has quite a different place in their atten- 
tion. They are entertained, or perhaps shocked, 
by his expenditures, but they regard him lightly. 

'*It is the man who does things, and who does 
them largely, in whom they take a serious interest. 
They are inclined, perhaps, to pardon him for 
things that ought not to be pardoned, because they 
feel so strongly the fascination of his potent will, 
his practical efficiency. 

**It is not the might of the dollar that im- 
presses them, it is the might of the man who wins 
the dollar magnificently by the development of 
American industry."* 

In this connection, Charles Wagner remarks 
that, ''In what is the best of her, America loves the 
life that is genuine and substantial, the life in 
which the things most highly valued are moral 
qualities, uprightness, energy, and kindness, as well 
as those fundamental family sentiments that are the 
cement of society. She knows that a nation lives 
neither by gold, nor by armies, nor by industrial 
prosperity, but that all these things, in so far as 
they are good and legitimate, are conducive to cer- 
tain fundamental virtues without which humanity 
could never advance. "t 

No man in America is respected unless he has 
the ability to achieve something useful to society, 

*p. 144. ip. 284. 



82 Democracy In America 

no matter how much he may possess by inheritance 
or by chance. Says De Tocqueville, '1 have some- 
times met in America with young men of wealth, 
personally disinclined to all laborous exertion, but 
who had been compelled to embrace a profession. 
Their disposition and their fortune allowed them to 
remain without employment ; public opinion for- 
bade it too imperiously to be disobeyed. In Euro- 
pean countries, on the contrary, where aristocracy 
is still struggling with the flood which overwhelms 
it, I have often seen men, constantly spurred on by 
their wants and desires, remain in idleness, in order 
not to lose the esteem of their equals; and I have 
known them to submit to ennui and privations 
rather than work."* * * * <<jj^ ^Yie United 
States a wealthy man thinks that he owes it 
to public opinion to devote his leisure to some kind 
of industrial or commercial pursuit, or to public 
business. He would think himself in bad repute 
if he employed his life solely in living. It is for the 
purpose of escaping this obligation to work, that so 
many rich Americans come to Europe, where they 
find some scattered remains of aristocratic society, 
amongst which idleness is still held in honor."! 

*'In Europe," observes Paul Blouet, ''there is a 
false notion that Jonathan thinks only of money, 
that he passes his life in the worship of the 'al- 
mighty dollar.' It is an error; I believe that at 
heart he cares but little for money. If a million- 
aire inspires respect, it is as much for the activity 

*II, 249. til. 161. 



Psychological Characteristics 33 

and talent he has displayed in the winning oi' his 
fortune as for the dollars themselves. An Amer- 
ican, who had nothing but his dollars to boast of, 
might easily see all English doors open to him, but 
his millions alone would not give him the entree 
into the ^ best society of Boston and New York. 
There he would be requested to produce some other 
recommendation. An American girl who was rich, 
but plain and stupid, would always find some Eng- 
lish duke, French marquis, or Italian count, ready 
to marry her, but she would have great difficulty in 
finding an American gentleman who would look 
upon her fortune or her dot as a sufficient indem- 
nity."* 

In regard to this American characteristic, 
Miinsterberg states that "A German observes im- 
mediately that the American does not prize his 
possessions much unless he has worked for them 
himself; of this there are innumerable proofs, in 
spite of the opposite appearances on the surface. 
One of the most interesting of these is the absence 
of the bridal dower. In Germany or France, the 
man looks on a wealthy marriage as one of the 
most reliable means of getting an income ; there 
are whole professions which depend on a man's 
eking out his entirely inadequate salary from prop- 
erty which he inherits or gets by marriage ; and the 
eager search for a handsome dowry — in fact, the 
general commercial character of marriage in reput- 
able European society everywhere — always sur- 
prises Americans. They know nothing of such a 

* p. 27. 



34 Democracy In America 

thing at home. Even when the parents of the bride 
are prosperous, it is unusual for a young couple 
to live beyond the means of the husband. Every- 
where one sees the daughters of wealthy families 
stepping into the modest homes of their husbands, 
and these husbands would feel it to be a disgrace 
to depend on their prosperous fathers-in-law. * "^ * 
The true American despises any one who gets 
money without working for it. Money is not the 
thing which is considered, but the manner of get- 
ting it. This is what the American cares for, and 
he prizes the gold he gets primarily as an indica- 
tion of his ability."* * * * Miinsterberg 
adds that, '*no person who has really come 
into the country will deny that material pleasures 
are less sought after for themselves in the New 
World than in the Old World. It always strikes 
the European as remarkable how very industrious 
American society is, and how relatively little bent 
on pleasure. It has often been said that the Amer- 
ican has not yet learned how to enjoy life; that he 
knows very well how to make money, but not how 
to enjoy it. And that is quite true; except that it 
leaves out of account the main point — which is, that 
the American takes the keenest delight in the en- 
joyment of all his faculties in his work, and in the 
exercise of his own initiative. This gives him more 
pleasure than the spending of money could bring 
him. It is, therefore, fundamentally false to stig- 
matize the American as a materialist, and to deny 
his idealism."!" 

* p. 232. t p. 236. "^ 



Psychological Characteristics 35 

The moral temperament of the Americans is 
less understood by foreigners than any other ele- 
ment of American character. From the long-dis- 
tance reports of stage robbing and train robbing, of 
an amazing number of homicides, of lynchings and 
the like, the people of foreign countries naturally 
conclude that the moral sense of the Americans 
must be very obtuse or remarkably undeveloped. 
As a matter of fact, much of the crime in America 
is due to an extraordinarily strong moral sentiment. 
For instance, lynching is often the expression of a 
furious moral indignation against attacks upon the 
virtue of women, and many murders grow out of a 
similar moral indignation against breaches of honor 
in the family circle, or against persons who are ill- 
tempered, cruel, profane, or otherwise offensive to 
the moral code. In older and more settled civiliza- 
tions, the people by habit leave all anti-social acts 
to be dealt with by the police; in America, where 
the police have been, and are yet in many places, 
inaccessible, the anti-social acts are often dealt with 
directly by the people. The morality of the Amer- 
icans partakes more of the roughness of barbarism 
than of the insensibility and supineness of decad- 
ence. It has the robustness of youth and nothing 
of the senility of old age ; and also it is youthful in 
the sense that it needs discipline and refining. 

Contrasting American morals with those of 
other countries, James F. Muirhead says, "In that 
which popular language usually means when it 
speaks of immorality, all outward indications point 
to the greater purity of the American. The con- 



36 Democracy In America 

versation of the smoking room is a little less apt 
to be risque, the possibility of masculine continence 
is more often taken for granted ; solicitation on the 
streets is rare ; few American publishers of repute 
dare to issue the semi-prurient style of novel at 
present so rife in England ; the columns of the lead- 
ing magazines are almost prudishly closed to any- 
thing suggesting the improper. The tone of the 
stage is distinctly healthier, and adaptations of 
hectic French plays are by no means so popular, in 
spite of the general sympathy of American taste 
with the French."* 

Passing to the mental temperament of the 
Americans, that is something very difficult to define, 
because of the vastness of the country and the con- 
trasting environments which tend to produce oppo- 
site types of character. For instance, the people 
of the northern and southern sections of the country 
differ in mental temperament much as the people 
of northern and southern Europe differ. In the 
North people live more indoors, are more quiet, 
less demonstrative in feelings, and more given to 
introspection and depression. In the South people 
live more out of doors, are more talkative, viva- 
cious, demonstrative, and less given to morbid re- 
flection. Yet the temperament of the American 
people everywhere partakes somewhat of the char- 
acteristics of both sections. It is a sort of blend, 
combining the fiery disposition of the Italian with 
the stolid disposition of the Teuton. Observing 
this blend in the American temperament, G. W. 

* p. 100. 



Psychological Characteristics 37 

Steevens remarks that, *Tar behind the flash of 
his passion, there shines always the steady light of 
dry, hard, practical reason. Shrewd yet excitable, 
hot-headed and cool-headed, he combines the 
northern and the southern temperaments, and yet 
is utterly distinct from either. *He has developed 
into a new sort of Anglo-Saxon, a new national 
character, a new race."* 

Races of men, and individuals of a race, differ 
more in their faculty of imagination than in any 
other mental attribute ; yet it is difficult to point 
out anything very distinctive of the imaginative 
faculty of the Americans. Combining as they do 
the mental tem^perament of the Italians and Teu- 
tons, the Americans should have a lively fancy, and 
an inclination to soar into the realms of the invis- 
ible, the romantic, and the prophetic. But, for 
several centuries, the Americans have been so pre- 
occupied with material conquests that their imag- 
ination has been chained to the earth, and its wings 
have been pruned in the dust. Nothing however, 
is more interesting in the study of the Americans 
than the efforts of their imagination to take flight. 
First of all, it had to await man's mastery of his 
physical environmient before it could release itself 
from bondage. Then its fledgeling wings began to 
make strange darts and perches; and even now it 
seems to be exploring and experimenting with un- 
certain vision and balance. The development in 
America of a m.ultitude of religious sects with the 
most extraordinary fanaticism and supernatural 

*p. 309. 



38 Democracy In America 

faith, is one of the clearest illustrations of the effort 
of the imagination to lift man out of his material 
imprisonment. Also illustrative of the same effort, 
is the development of innumerable Utopian projects, 
such as Brook Farm, Icaria, and the like, which, 
although sprouted from French seed, have found 
here the richest soil. Many American crazes for 
innovations and novelties in legislation, such as 
land banks, paper money, free coinage and the sub- 
treasury scheme of the Farmers' Alliance for lend- 
ing two per cent money on farm products, and so 
on, are in a large measure the outcome of an imag- 
ination that is awake but undernourished. Still 
other illustrations might be drawn from the early 
efforts of ambitious Americans in the field of liter- 
ature and art. 

Great achievements of the imagination, in a 
race or individual, come only from a deep stirring 
of the passions, from catastrophe, suffering, heroic 
conflict and the presence of spectacles that are 
grand, sublime or awful. A nation of people can 
have a refined imagination only after the trials and 
tragedies of life have cast a shadow upon its brow. 

The American is, no doubt, an idealist, but his 
ideals are vague, and generally too grand for the 
average individual to realize. Democracy stimu- 
lates aspiration and great expectations, so that, no 
matter what a man achieves, he falls short of his 
anticipations and dreams. His goal is a sort of 
phantom, like the mirage which follows the traveler 
across the desert. He hastens forward and finds 
only sand where an hour before he saw a lake. 



Psychological Characteristics 39 

Not visualizing clearly what he is living for, the 
American is ever in a state of disappointment, per- 
plexity, and restlessness. De Tocqueville observed 
this characteristic in 1830. Contrasting the people 
of the Old World and the New, he says: 

*'In America I saw the freest and most en- 
lightened men, placed in the happiest circumstances 
which the world affords; it seemed to me as if a 
cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I 
thought them serious and almost sad even in their 
pleasures. The chief reason of this contrast is that 
the former do not think of the ills they endure — the 
latter are forever brooding over advantages they do 
not possess. It is strange to see with what feverish 
ardor the Americans pursue their own welfare ; and 
to watch the vague dread that constantly torments 
them lest they should not have chosen the shortest 
path which may lead to it.''* 

*ln the United States a man builds a house to 
spend his latter years in it, and he sells it before 
the roof is on: he plants a garden, and lets it just 
as the trees are coming into bearing; he brings a 
field into tillage, and leaves other men to gather 
the crops; he embraces a profession, and gives it 
up; he settles in a place, which he soon afterwards 
leaves, to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. 
If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he in- 
stantly plunges into the vortex of politics; and if 
at the end of a year of unremitting labor he finds 
he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity 
whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, 

* TI, 144. 



40 Democracy In America 

and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few 
days, to shake off his unhappiness. Death at length 
overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his 
bootless chase of that complete felicity which is 
forever on the wing. 

''At first sight there is something surprising in 
this strange unrest of so many happy men, restless 
in the midst of abundance. The spectacle itself is 
however as old as the world; the novelty is to see 
a whole people furnish an exemplification of it. 
Their tas^e for physical gratificatioii must l)e re- 
garded as the original source of that secret in- 
quietude which the actions of the Americans be- 
tray, and of that inconstancy of which they afford 
fresh examples every day. He who has set his 
heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly wel- 
fare is always in a hurry, for he has but a limited 
time at his disposal to reach it, to grasp it, and to 
enjoy it."* * * * 

''Amongst democratic nations men easily at- 
tain a certain equality of conditions; they can never 
attain the equality they desire. It perpetually re- 
tires from before them, yet without hiding itself 
from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At 
every moment they think they are about to grasp 
it; it escapes at every moment from their hold. 
They are near enough to see its charms, but too far 
off to enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted 
its delights they die. To these causes must be 
attributed that strange melancholy which often- 
times will haunt the inhabitants of democratic 

* II, 145. 



Psychological Characteristics 41 

countries in the midst of their abundance, and that 
disgust at life which sometimes seizes upon them in 
the midst of calm and easy circumstances. Com- 
plaints are made in France that the number of sui- 
cides increases; in America suicide is rare, but in- 
sanity is said to be more common than anywhere 
else. These are all different symptoms of the same 
disease. The Americans do not put an end to their 
lives, however disquieted they may be, because 
their religion forbids it; and amongst them ma- 
terialism may be said hardly ^to exist, notwith- 
standing the general passion for physical gratifica- 
tion. The will resists — reason frequently gives w^ay. 

'*In democratic ages enjoyments are more in- 
tense than in the ages of aristocracy, and especially 
the number of those who partake in them is larger; 
but, on the other hand, it must be admitted that 
man's hopes and his desires are often blasted, the 
soul is more stricken and perturbed, and care 
itself more keen."* 

A more recent French writer, Paul Blouet, 
also noticing the restlessness of our people, says, 
"Those Americans are never still, never at rest. 
Even when they are sitting, they must be on the 
move; witness the rocking chair habit. "f 

The anguish and restlessness of the Americans 
have another source in the general whirlwind of 
change, irruption of new ideas and uprooting ot 
traditions characteristic of all civilized nations dur- 
ing the past century. The rapid and revolutionary 
transformations have demolished landmarks which 

*p. 147. tP. 235. 



42 Democracy In America 

formerly guided men to a life of calm and content- 
ment. Industry, science, philosophy, and religion 
have been undergoing adjustment to new discov- 
eries and new conditions. The individual, loosened 
from his traditional moorings, has become a dere- 
lict, because of the impossibility of charting his 
way across so many untried seas. In short, he has 
to grope and delve for the truth under so many new 
aspects, and has so many opinions and decisions to 
arrive at, that he is overwhelmed. He has to con- 
sider such a multiplicity of things that he is not 
quite certain of anything. He has something of the 
indecision and perplexity of a Hamlet. Even the 
self-reliance of the American is overworked. 

Again, because he is accustomed to comforts 
and luxuries which princes and kings could not en- 
joy a century ago, he is extremely sensitive. Hence 
he suffers acutely from any reverse of fortune, and 
is unable to bear up, as his forefathers were, under 
the ordinary vicissitudes of life. 

His mental perturbance is the more unbearable 
because he has arrived at no philosophy which can 
represent to him the unknown something which he 
craves. The kindliness and philanthropy which are 
so common to the American are partly due to his in- 
quietude. His sympathy for his own misery and 
incompleteness of life makes him feel keenly for 
others, and inclines him to lend a helping hand. 

But, we may ask, if the American is really an 
idealist, why should he suffer this heart-sickness 
and restlessness? What is fundamentally wrong 
with his idealism? Perhaps a correct answer to 



Psychological Characteristics 43 

this question is impossible to any man of this gen- 
eration, and may have to await the perspective of 
a future epoch. It seems to the writer, however, 
that the vagueness of modern idealism, and the 
general dissatisfaction over his life, are due to two 
facts. First, a more delicate conscience than was 
ever characteristic of a former age. Man's rela- 
tionships are now more complex than ever before; 
his activities are more varied and responsible, and 
therefore man has to reflect more on the turpitude 
and wisdom of his conduct, and has more often 
occasion to feel doubt and remorse. Second, the 
modern man, because this is an age of machinery 
and system, deals more with things than with per- 
sons, and his idealism does not visualize a satisfied 
personal relationship. Incidentally he is ready to 
lend help to his neighbor, though he seldom knows 
him, and to contribute to the public welfare with 
his services and his purse ; but he is habituated to 
the idea that his own happiness and that of others 
depend upon the possession of a certain share of 
material goods. He has only vague ideas as to 
what material possessions can accomplish for him 
or for others. 

If we hark back to the seventeenth century, or 
earlier, we observe that production was carried on 
under the regime of domestic economy, i. e., nearly 
everything was manufactured and prepared for 
consumption in the home. Men had to do with per- 
sons rather than with things, since production was 
characterized by a close personal relationship of 
the workers. The workers were chiefly members 



44 Democracy In America 

of the family, with perhaps one or several outsid- 
ers known as apprentices. Every man who pro- 
duced anything witnessed its full effects upon oth- 
ers. The more successful the undertaking the more 
gratifications and pleasures fell to the lot of the 
members of his economic group. He felt a con- 
sciousness, therefore, that he was always laboring 
for the welfare of persons and not for the mere 
material instruments of welfare. In the absence of 
opportunities to gain large fortunes, the ambition 
of man was chiefly, to enhance the well-being of his 
own family and neighborhood. Under this regime 
there was more fellowship in production than there 
is now, more communal and less egoistic aspiration, 
and more consciousness of loyalty and service to 
others. The producers of wealth felt the same 
kind of stimulation, fellowship, and tranquility 
which now characterizes an athletic team, or a 
camping party. 

Under our modern industrial regime, man in- 
vests his capital in sundry corporations, often with- 
out coming in contact with a single worker. The 
outcome of the enterprise he sees only in the form 
of dividends. He does not see the pale faces, the 
sick, the crippled, and the widowed, who are the 
victims of the process, to say nothing of the blight- 
ed child life. What good or ill comes to the wage- 
earners, or to the tailor, milliner, grocer, automo- 
bile or gasoline dealer, who get his dividends, un- 
less he examines statistics, he sees not and knows 
not. There is in it no fellowship in production, nor 



Psychological Characteristics 45 

community of aim, nor consciousness or visualiza- 
tion of loyalty and service to others. 

Human nature is so constituted that man can 
find satisfaction only in fellowship of effort, in a 
feeling of loyalty to his comrades in labor, and in 
suffering and rejoicing with his comrades in what- 
ever fortune their joint responsibility may yield. 
In the industrial world, as in the athletic, every 
man must work primarily for the team, he must 
be loyal, self-sacrificing, and feel a keen conscious- 
ness that his aim is communal. I do not mean to 
say that the people of any past century ever realized 
this ideal perfectly, nor to imply that no one in 
modern times has lived up to it. But I m.erely ad- 
vance the thesis, that in the degree to which a 
people live up to this ideal they enjoy a serene and 
contented life; and in the degree to which they do 
not, they are disquieted and heart-sick. 

To sum up this discussion, man can have no 
peace on earth unless he loves his neighbor as him- 
self, and this implies fellowship with him in work 
and play. Call this a law of human nature, the 
Divine Law or what not, all philosophies, religions, 
and politics must harmonize with it or they perish. 
I shall try to show in other chapters how the gen- 
eral trend of democracy is toward the realization 
of this ideal; and also to show upon what grounds 
we may hope that the Americans, in common with 
the people of all other nations, may reorganize 
their social conditions, readjust their ideals, and 
recover from that agitation and despair which have 
characterized them during the past century. 



46 Democracy In America 

In the near future, for better or worse, the psy- 
chological characteristics of the Americans are 
destined to undergo a radical change. Up to re- 
cent times we have had the advantage of a some- 
what unified race and common culture which have 
given rise to the characteristics above defined. But 
since about fifty years ago the source of immigra- 
tion into America has changed from northern to 
southern Europe, bringing in a preponderance of 
the Mediterranean and Alpine races which contrast 
sharply in physical features and in culture with 
the prevailing American type. A possible outcome 
may be that the United States will come to be 
made up of a number of segregated and unassimil- 
able races, like former Austria-Hungary, and for 
centuries hence will have no common tradition, no 
unified culture, and no definable national character- 
istics. Lawrence A. Lowell, in his book, 'Tublic 
Opinion and Popular Government," says, "In coun- 
tries with a popular or semi-popular form of gov- 
ernment the conflict of races is the most obvious 
factor that interferes with the formation of a real 
public opinion."* 

* p. 32. 



CHAPTER II. 
INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 

ASPIRATION, SELF-DETERMINATION AND INTENSE ENER- 
GY OF THE AMERICANS— FONDNESS FOR MACHINERY 
—STRICT SUPERVISION OF THE LABORER— GENIUS 
FOR ORGANIZATION— CRAZE FOR SPECULATION, 
WHICH IS ENCOURAGED BY THE BANKS. 

There seems to be a consensus of foreign opin- 
ion that Americans exhibit in their industrial life 
a marked degree of aspiration, self-determination, 
and intense energy. Americans appear to the for- 
eign observer to be always in a hurry, in fact, to be 
speed fiends. "The chief impression you get," says 
Burne-Jones, "on landing in New York, and the last 
you have on leaving it, is of an atmosphere of fright- 
ful hurry and restless bustle everywhere. It is very 
fatiguing. On all sides men and women in the streets 
seem urged and driven by some frantic Demon of 
Haste — whither and for what cause one could never 
guess. One wondered again and again what could 
possibly be of such overwhelming importance as to 
justify this atrocious economy of time — at the ex- 
pense of such tremendous nerve strain, of health 
and often of life itself. What is there in the air 
of New York, different from that of other cities, 
which would explain 'this headlong stampede of 
its citizens? The children playing in the streets 
seem anxiously alert — babies in arms often look 

[47] 



48 Democracy In America 

thoughtful and careworn, and glance sharply up 
at you, with fatigued, nervous eyes. The very cats 
appear distrait, and preoccupied, and as though 
they were late for an appointment. Who ever would 
stop to say *puss, puss' to an American cat? And 
the dogs are dreadfully busy, too. The popular ex- 
pression 'to get a move on,' *to hustle,' 'to step lively,' 
and the more dignified allusions by the President 
himself to the 'strenuous life,' are all colloquial 
straws that show which way the national wind is 
blowing."* 

As a consequence of this haste Americans are 
lovers of every kind of labor-saving device. "The 
American," says Lawson, "has a genius for finding 
out easy ways; also for inventing tools to the same 
end. There is no 'main force and stupidity' about 
him. He is seldom to be seen tugging and tearing 
away at heavy weights with his bare hands as the 
British laborers generally do. * * * At any of 
the lumber mills out West quite an instructive ex- 
hibition may be seen of labor-saving contrivances, 
not one of which perhaps has ever been thought of 
elsewhere. First, the logs are brought out of the 
woods on a narrow-gauge railway. Next, they are 
thrown into a big pond close to the sawmill. As 
needed they are hauled up by an endless chain to a 
table adjoining the handsaw. This table is per- 
fectly automatic, and with two men to watch it, it 
can slice up heavy logs in half a minute. With a 
forward movement it pushes the log against the 
band saw, which passes through it as if it were 

* p. 21. 



Industrial Life 49 

paper. When a cut is finished it draws back the log 
and starts again. When the log has to be turned 
round, an iron arm shoots up at the side and tosses 
it over with a bang. The boards are carried away 
on endless bands to the planing and grooving ma- 
chines, which generalh^ have a line of railway trucks 
standing alongside of them. In ten minutes after 
the log was hauled out of the pond it may be loaded 
on a railway truck in the form of beams, scantlings, 
and floor boards. To the last it is moved mechan- 
ically. The men loading the cars use a peculiar kind 
of lever hook with a long handle, which gives them 
double the purchase their bare hands would have. 
A British laborer would at first be quite at sea 
among such contrivances. He would never invent 
them for himself as the American has done. 

"The motto of the British trade unionist 'make 
the work go round and let as many men as possible 
have a share in it,' has no parallel in the United 
States. But it has a counterpart with precisely the 
opposite effect— 'Get the work as far as possible to 
do itself,' or, as the Americans themselves express 
it, 'We work hard finding out how to avoid work.' 
Economy of muscular effort is the keynote of Amer- 
ican industry in all its branches. It is a principle 
with the employers and an instinct with workmen. 
From the log-hut to the biggest packing house in 
Chicago it is the rule. Out West where the 'hired 
help' is almost as great a luxury as diamonds, a lady 
will do in her own kitchen as much cooking in a few^ 
minutes as the average product of a London registry 
office could get through in an hour. Of course she 



50 Democracy In America 

has her kitchen specially organized and fitted up for 
speed. On the farm her husband will do as much 
work in a day as could be got out of a Devonshire 
laborer in a week or more. And there will be leSvS 
waste of human muscle in the process. 

*'As a rule the machines are badly cared for 
when not in use, standing all the year round in open 
air. rain or shine, and consequently they are, like 
the American locomotive, short-lived. It is taken 
for granted that long before they can be worn out 
something better will be in the market."* 

Of the effects of the machinery upon the work- 
man, Lawson seems to think, that, ''Apart from in- 
creasing his efficiency as a workman and the amount 
of his output, it has raised his character and en- 
larged his mind. It has made him easier to deal with 
both as an employee and as a citizen. It puts him 
on more equal terms with his employer. Wherever 
a little skill or judgment are required of him he 
ceases to be a mere drudge to be ordered about. A 
wise master will consult him instead of giving him 
orders, and will often get useful hints from him." 

The American laborer submits to a very strict 
discipline. ''A highly organized system of surveil- 
lance," says Lawson, ''covers the whole field of 
American industry. This may sound incompatible 
with the popular notions of the land of freedom, but 
it is the fact. And when understood it will be found 
in the main quite justifiable. In judging a matter 
of this sort we have to remember the immense diver- 

*pp. 82-85. 



Industrial Life 51 

sity of Ameriean labor — the fact that it has many 
grades, is of many nationalities, and speaks many 
tongues. Though highly skilled at the top, the mass 
of unskilled labor below is enormous. Much of it is 
not merely unskilled, but ignorant and half civilized. 
It has to be taught as well as superintended. A 
sharp eye has to be kept on it all the time, and that 
is the function of the boss, who occurs in a great 
variety of forms and characters. * * '■ We 
have him in England under many different names, 
but he is never quite the same boss. With us he is 
a more or less lenient taskmaster, a casual visitor 
rather than a supervisor. In his higher forms he is 
a gentleman, or has to try to be, which is destructive 
of vigilance and efficiency. There is no boss so 
strict as an Irishman lording it over half a dozen 
other Irishmen. The Americans begin v/ith him, 
and rise through a long gradation of authority to 
the boss with thousands of men at his call. Be the 
sphere large or small, the authority is absolute. A 
man may 'turn up his job' at any moment, but while 
he is on it he must obey his boss as implicitly as a 
soldier in the ranks. * * * What one seldom or 
never sees is skulking or dawdling. There is no 
leaning on shovels or studying the passers-by or any 
other form of philosophic meditation permitted on 
an American job. Above all, there is no eleven 
o'clock beer or four o'clock beer. The boss every- 
where has a strong objection to beer. On duty it is 
strictly tabooed, and even off duty it is discouraged. 
* * * For a locomotive driver to be seen in a 
saloon, whether on or off duty, would mean a bad 



52 Democracy In America 

mark against him. To be seen a*second time would 
produce a sharp warning from the boss of his di- 
vision, and a third offense would be fatal. The same 
rule applies to firemen, and in a slighter degree to 
all the rest of the train crew — conductors, brake- 
men, etc. Even clerks and other employees uncon- 
nected with the operation of the road have to be 
very shy of saloons and all other institutions of the 
kind, which if not expressly tabooed would not fig- 
ure well in the confidential reports made periodi- 
cally to the mianagement on every employee. The 
careless maxim of some British masters, that their 
men can do what they like in their own time, is never 
heard in the United States."* 

The American laborer submits to this strict 
discipline because he realizes that it means the pro- 
motion of workers on the basis of merit. 'The good 
workman," says Lawson, *'is taken note of as well 
as the bad one. Thanks to it, men are unexpectedly 
raised from the ranks, and having got their feet on 
the lower rungs of the ladder they will have a chance 
to rise to the top. Such things rarely happen under 
our happy-go-lucky regime, where if men are less 
closely looked after than in the States, they have 
all the more chance to be overlooked when promo- 
tions are going on."** * * * 'pj^g Amer- 
ican worker "does not find all of the desirable places 
in workshops filled with relatives of directors and 
head officials. * * * He will not see responsible 
positions occupied by ornamental figureheads or re- 
sponsible work intrusted to glib talkers. "f 

*p. 98. **p. 100, tP- 28. 



Industrial Life 53 

A characteristic of the American industrial sys- 
tem is that it keeps the door open for every man to 
rise to the top. 'The American workingman," savs 
Miinsterberg, "feels himself to be quite the equal of 
any other citizen, and this not merely in the legal 
sense. This results chiefly from the intense political 
life of the country and the democratic form of gov- 
ernment, which knows no social prerogatives. It re- 
sults also from the absence of social caste. There is 
a considerable class feeling, but no artificial lines 
which hinder any man from working up to any posi- 
tion. The most modest laborer knows that he may, 
if he is able, work up to a distinguished position in 
the social structure of the nation."* * * « 
"American society knows no unwritten law whereby 
the workingman of today must be the same tomior- 
row, and this gives to the whole labor question in 
America its distinction from the labor question in 
European aristocratic countries. In most cases the 
superiors have themselves once been laborers. Mil- 
lionaires who today preside over the destinies of 
thousands of workingmen have often themselves be- 
gun with the shovel or hod."t 

It is a common remark of foreigners that Amer- 
icans have a genius for organization. De Tocque- 
ville attributed this to our system of local govern- 
ment which trained us in the art of cooperation. 
Lawson thinks that our genius for organization was 
developed in the training schools of war, mining and 
railroading. "In each and all of these schools," he 
says, "the present generation of Americans have had 

* 1). 321. tp. 323. 



54 Democracy In America 

a severe training. A very large remnant of both the 
Northern and Southern armies of the Civil War still 
survives. The generals and colonels, whom it 
trained by hundreds, as soon as the war was over, 
hastened back to civil life. They became distin- 
guished railroaders, financiers, manufacturers, and 
merchants. The rough virtues they acquired in 
camp served them well in business, and this element, 
though on the decline, is still strong enough to give 
a decided tone to commercial life. Military spirit 
continues to show itelf in very odd ways. 

''Immediately after the Civil War a new school 
of discipline and of organizing powder was thrown 
open to Americans in the mining camps ot the far 
AVest. There was much more got out of the Corn- 
stock lode than mere gold and silver. The 'old 
timers' who went through that experience, whether 
they became millionaires, like Flood and Mackay, 
or remained poor men, derived from it a splendid 
education. Subsequently they spread all over the 
west, and everywhere they proved themselves men 
of ready resources and strong character. Many of 
them became managers of large minen and presi- 
dents of mining companies. They are to be met with 
today in every important mining district and most 
of them can be recognized at once by their quiet, 
authoritative way of doing things. They can keep 
their fingers on an army of ignorant Hungarian, 
Swedish and Italian workmen as if they v/ere 
children. It is a sort of magic power they ap- 
pear to have acquired through sheer force of 
governing. However turbulent and unruly the 



Industrial Life 55 

men might be in weaker hands, they recognize 
strength and dominant will when they feel them. 
* * * rpj^g writer has met in the Far West 
several notable examples of this class of manager — 
the organizing expert. He has a vivid recollection 
of one in particular — a sinewy, silent Cornish- 
man whom he encountered one day on the Mesaba 
Range. He had two mines in his charge, the second 
being twenty miles away on a different iron ore for- 
mation. Both were turning out six or eight hundred 
tons of ore per day, and employing about six hun- 
dred men. Chance threw us in the way of the silent 
but keen-sighted manager as he was going his daily 
round of the shaft-heads and various workshops. 

''He drove up in a strong but light buggy with- 
out any groom or attendant. First he had a look at 
the ore wagons coming up the shaft to see what kind 
of ore was being taken out. From them he passed 
on to the breakers at the pit head, where the ore is 
broken, sized, and classiiied. Thence to the engine- 
house, the machine shop, the air compressor, and 
finally to the offices. In each place he walked 
quietly around, asking a question here, making a 
suggestion there ; now examining a new rock drill — 
now watching some experiment or other. Having 
been years underground himself, and through every 
department of the work above ground, he knev/ at 
a glance when things were right. From end to end 
he had planned the whole establishm.ent, and in 
more senses than one he was its master. His rule 
was firm but just — and even liberal. It extended not 
only over the mine but over the adjoining town in 



56 Democracy In America 

which the men lived. Every cottage belonged to 
the company; so did the schools, the town hall, and 
the free library. All were under the manager's rule, 
tempered in some cases with the help of a commit- 
tee. Above ground and below the whole place was 
a model of organization. In the long series of oper- 
ations one succeeded another with perfect regular- 
ity, until the ore was shot into the immense ore cars 
and started off for its shipping place on Lake Su- 
perior, where it dropped out of the cars into ore 
bins, and from the bins was run into lake steamers, 

•'What this kind of mine manager can do is to 
be seen not only in the Western States but in many 
other parts of the world, including our own colonies. 
It was conspicuously exemplified on the Rand gold- 
field at a critical period of its history. At the open- 
ing up of the Rand many costly mistakes had been 
made by the self-styled mining engineers, who al- 
ways turn up in crowds on such occasions and exploit 
things much to their own advantage and the corre- 
sponding loss of their employers. The original 
movement had in consequence collapsed, and it re- 
mained in discredit until Mr. Rhodes had the happy 
thought of calling in some American experts. It is 
needless to recall the wonderful transformation they 
effected. Amateur muddlings were replaced by 
scientific methods. A cheap inefficient plant was 
cleared out to make room for machinery that would 
work. Order and system were brought out of chaos. 
Profits began to appear where hitherto there had 
been monthly deficits. The Rand was, in a word, 



Industrial Life 57 

reorganized, or rather it was organized for the first 
time."* 

*'The present generation of Americans contains 
a greater number of great organizers than were ever 
simultaneously at work before. They have distin- 
guished themselves as railroad builders, President 
Hill of the Great Northern, for example; as iron 
and steel makers, witness Mr. Carnegie; as manu- 
facturers, like Mr. Havemeyer of the Sugar Trust; 
as traders like Mr. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil 
Company; and as rulers like President Roosevelt. In 
the methods of these various masters there may be 
room for criticism, but in one thing they agree — 
they are all of the Napoleonic breed. As in Sir 
Thomas Brassey^s case there is among them a com- 
bination of exceptional powers — unusual breadth of 
mind, strong intellect, keen insight and rare pa- 
tience. The imagination which sees far ahead is 
united in them to keen grasp of the smallest de- 
tails. The two opposite qualities of brilliant con- 
ception and careful execution are equally strong in 
them. They have, in short, the gifts both of the 
ideal and the practical organizer."t 

American genius for organization is not only 
shown in commerce and industry but in farming. 
Speaking of the big farms of Oregon, De Constant 
says, ''one sees strange tbreshing machines hauled 
by thirty horses through oceans of cereals which they 
reap and bind into sheaves. A great many ears are 
no doubt lost, but there is a great saving in time and 
wages; and what do a few ears matter in a field of 

* p. 109. t p. 112. 



58 Democracy In America 

such vast size? It is not a wheat field, but a field 
of battle; the sheaves, formed in squares that extend 
farther than the eye can see, look like an army split 
up into thousands of regular platoons. Then we 
have the pasture lands, extending over hill and dale, 
belonging to some gigantic farm, extending far away 
to the horizon and bounded only by the majestic 
white outline of Mount Hood or the Crown of Mount 
Olym.pus; flocks of sheep on the pastures and flowers 
in the gardens, and villas perched on the hillside 
like so many opera boxes from which to watch the 
daily spectacle of the sun setting in the glory of sky, 
cloud and water." * * * Of the great orchards, 
he says, ''These justly celebrated apples are gath- 
ered by armies of youths, collected in great num- 
bers so as to finish the work as quickly as possible. 
They work on ingeniously contrived ladders which 
I recommend to our Norman and Maine farmers. 
We have a bad habit of knocking our apples from 
the trees — by which I do not mean that we treat an 
apple tree like a walnut tree, but we take no pre- 
cautions and do a good deal of damage to the next 
crop. The Americans, on the other hand, gather 
the fruit by hand so as not to break the twigs and 
branches; but to do this they have special double 
ladders which are never leaned against the tree. 
Large two-horse wagons are driven about and soon 
piled up with cases, stuck all over with bright-col- 
ored advertising labels, which are then conveyed 
to the nearest railroad depot or port. 

''The Americans do not confine themselves to 
gathering their apples methodically. They watch 



Industrial Life 59 

the growth of the fruit very much as our vine grow- 
ers look after their vines. When the blossom comes 
out, it is sprinkled with sulphates, and they obtain 
remarkably regular and abundant crops. I have 
been shown five-year-old trees that have each pro- 
duced hundreds of large apples. * * * It is a 
question of organization. The American knows how 
to organize. If it were possible to summarize the 
difference between the French and the American 
temperament in one word, I would say that the one 
has carefulness and the other 'organizing ability." 

De Constant visited Seth Low's model farm near 
New York, and of this he writes, **I have seen con- 
siderable progress accomplished every year by the 
French people and the government itself in my coun- 
try. I have also seen remarkable developments in 
England and other European countries, and I 
thought the United States could hardly beat us in 
this matter, except perhaps as regards the size of 
their undertakings, but I was mistaken. Brook 
Farm proved to be another, instance of scrupulous 
care, method and search after perfection in every 
detail. My visit to the dairy at evening feeding time 
was very instructive. As on our best farms, little 
cars on rails brought the impatient cows their sup- , 
ply of sweet-smelling fodder. Then came a second 
course, consisting of some kind of cake mixed with 
handfuls of salt. Two youths fed a herd of forty 
cows in a quarter of an hour. Diagrams hung up 
in the cow houses showed at a glance how much 
milk each animal produced per day. There were 
TDpliances for manipulating the cream and also, if 



60 Democracy In America 

I am not mistaken, machines for making ice to keep 
the cream fresh. There were also pigsties, ingeni- 
ously contrived so that each family could wallow or 
trot about in the enjoyment of plenty of light, air 
and freedom. Everything else was on similar 
lines."* 

The inventiveness of the Americans attracts the 
attention of nearly all observers. ''There is no coun- 
try in the world, "says Miinsterberg, ''where so much 
is invented. This is shown not merely in the fact 
that an enormous number of patents is granted 
every year, but also w^here there is nothing to patent, 
the Yankee exercises his ingenuity every day. From 
the simplest tool up to the most complicated ma- 
chine, American invention has improved and per- 
fected, and made the theoretically correct practi- 
cally serviceable as well. To be sure, the cost of hu- 
man labor in a thinly settled country has had a great 
influence on this development; but a special talent 
has also lain in this direction — a real genius for 
solving practical problems. Every one knows how 
much the American has contributed to the perfec- 
tion of the telegraph, telephone, incandescent light, 
phonograph and sewing machine, to watch making 
machinery, to the steamboat and locomotive, the 
printing press and typewriter, to machinery for min- 
ing and engineering, and to all sorts of agricultural 
and manufacturing devices. "f 

Foreigners, however, do not fail to note certain 
defects in our industrial system. For one thing, we 

* p. 106. i p. 248. 



Industrial Life 61 

emphasize quantity more than quality. Says Law- 
son, ''Individuals, firms, corporations, and states, 
right up to Congress itself, are all bent on breaking 
records. It is the keynote of their lives, and largely 
determines the character of their activity."* 

Americans are too much inclined to speculate, 
and to follow wild ventures. ''Not so many years 
ago," remarks Lawson, "speculation in stocks was 
confined to New York and two or three of the prin- 
cipal cities of the interior. Chicago was of course 
the headquarters of speculation in grain, but its 
Stock Exchange was of very little account. * * * 
But an enormous expansion of all kinds of gambling 
is now visible. The Western Union Telegraph Com- 
pany supplies stock quotations and racing news at 
a fixed rate per annum to all and sundry. Every 
hotel and beer saloon has its ticker. Every town of 
fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants has a Stock 
Exchange or Board of Trade. Every provincial 
broker who would be thought anything of has his 
special wires from Wall Street and issues his daily 
bulletin to clients. From Boston to San Francisco 
nearly everybody talks more or less of stocks, op- 
tions, bulges and corners. * * * There is thus a 
plentiful supply of inflammable material for the 
Wall Street leaders to operate on. A hint has only 
to be dropped that the Morgan brokers have been 
large buyers of Southerns, or that Keene speaks well 
of Union Pacific prospects, or that Gates has formed 
a bull pool in Atchison, and it will be flashed across 
the continent over every tape machine and into the 

*p. 19. 



62 Democracy In America 

columns of every newspaper. Then the bull fever 
breaks out again, and orders to buy are flashed back 
to Wall Street from all over the country. From 
Montreal to El Paso, and from Philadelphia to 
Seattle, the grand army of punters answers to the 
signal. A leader can do most anything with such a 
following. He can run up prices till he gets tired of 
raking in profits. He can unload shares by tens of 
thousands in sure and perfect hope that he will be 
able to get them back again when he wants them, 
and at his own price. He can lure them on with 
privileges, new issues, combinations, rumors of in- 
creased dividends, and all the rainbow visions that 
fascinate the gambler. If now and then he takes 
out the peg which holds up their fool's paradise and 
lets them drop into the cellar, the woirst he has to 
fear is that they may storm and swear a bit. But he 
knows they are very forgiving, and at the first offer 
of a new plum they will all swarm round him 
again."* 

Our banks, which should have been a conserva- 
tive force in our industrial life, have, in fact, been 
the willing tools of speculators. "In the United 
States," according to Lawson, ''there are about ten 
times as many banks as in the United Kingdom. Man 
for man, they are equally capable, and have quite as 
strong a sense of responsibility. In some respects 
they are better trained, and have greater calls on 
their personal judgment. But the active, alert 
American does not make as good a banker as the 
more stolid Englishman. He treats banking as an 

*p. 225. 



Industrial Life 63 

ordinary business, which it is not. In order to insure 
safety, it has to be conducted with much greater 
caution than an ordinary business; it has to provide 
a broader margin against risks; it has to subject 
itself to fixed rules which an American banker 
would call wooden. But the practical effect of the 
wooden and unwritten traditions by which English 
bankers voluntarily bind themselves is that their 
work is well if rather monotonously done, and that 
serious trouble is rare among them. American bank- 
ers have never learned caution as it is understood in 
England. In their early days they were so free and 
easy that the Legislature had to apply to them re- 
straints which they would not practice of their own 
accord. Procrustean rules were imposed on them 
from outside, such as the law requiring them to 
hold cash reserves equal to not less than one-fourth 
of their deposits. Because they cannot be trusted 
to keep out of danger by themselves they are 

watched, inspected, and regulated by the State. 
* * * 

^'United States banking is resourceful only in 
the wrong sense, not in devising safeguards for itself, 
but in getting itself cornered and having to call on 
the government for heroic measures of relief. 
Strange to say, the rank and file of ordinary traders 
are more conservative than their bankers. While in 
England the banker is supposed to hold the trader 
in check, in the United States the trader has to keep 
a sharp eye on the banker."* 

* p. 25. 



64 Democracy In America 

In the early part of the nineteenth century, 
during the era of wild-cat banking, the banks of the 
large cities were the bulwarks against speculation 
and reckless adventures; but, since the era of the 
national banking system, the provincial banks have 
become the conservative forces in finance, and the 
metropolitan banks, by reason of their alliance with 
railroads, trusts, and stock manipulators, have be- 
come the wild-cats of finance and the menace to 
legitimate business. Under the new and revised 
banking act, which separates the corporate control 
of banks from that of railroads, and other big cor- 
porations, it is to be hoped that the banks of the 
great centers will resume their natural function of 
conserving the nation's legitimate industries. 



CHAPTER III. 

INDUSTRIAL LIFE— (Continued) 

ami:rican industrial orc^anization lacks ef- 
ficiency— opportunities TOO MUCH limited TO 
THE large capitalists— industry IT TOO PATER- 
NALISTIC—THE WAGE CLASS HAS NOT THE STIMULUS 
TO EFFICIENT \VORK— THE OBJECT OF PRODUCTION 
NOT WELL-DEFINED. 

After all, is our American industrial system 
efficient? Before answering this question we must 
state what are the elements necessary for efficiency 
in industry. First of all, conditions must exist which 
offer to the capitalist, the wage-worker, the farmer, 
or the professional man, an opportunity to employ his 
genius or skill to its utmost possibility of achieve- 
ment. Our present conditions are very far from 
offering this opportunity. In a country where pro- 
duction is highly organized, and carried on upon a 
gigantic scale, only the capitalist who commands 
large resources has any real freedom of opportunity. 
The man of small means is greatly restricted in the 
number of enterprises in which he may embark, and 
he is generally obliged to invest his capital in some 
large corporation in which he has very little respon- 
sibility or power of initiative. The small farmer has 
a similar disadvantage as compared to the large 
farmer. He is restricted in his choice of location, 
and in his use of machinery and equipment neces- 

[65] 



66 Democracy In America 

sary to efficient production. The man without cap- 
ital has a still more restricted opportunity. He often 
lacks facilities for education and training, and is 
obliged to take up such employment as his locality 
affords. The capitalist, the farmer, and the wage- 
earner have very unequal chances for rising to that 
position in our industrial system for which their ap- 
titudes would qualify them. And so long as such 
inequalities exist our industrial system cannot be 
considered efficient, whatever wonderful things a 
few men may be able to achieve. 

In the next place, our industrial system does not 
furnish a proper stimulus to efficiency. In order 
that a worker may put forth his best effort, he must 
work under conditions that satisfy his instinct of 
self-assertion, and give him a feeling of responsi- 
bility for the outcome of the enterprise in which he 
works. He must feel something of the enthusiasm 
for achievement which characterizes the members 
of an athletic team, and must be able to experience 
the thrills of joy that come with the victory. Under 
present conditions such stimulus is possible only to 
a small number of capitalists and professional men. 
The wage-worker has no responsibility in the suc- 
cess or failure of the enterprise in which he may 
spend the greater part of his life. He has no share 
in the control of the business, nor voice in the dis- 
tribution of the profits. Similarly the tenant farmer 
lacks the incentive to efficient cultivation of the land 
because he has no assurance of reaping the beneftt 
of improvements which he may make in the soil and 
in his equipment. Even the professional man — ^the 



Industrial Life 67 

lawyer, engineer, chemist, and especially the edi- 
torial writer, is often obliged to surrender his services 
to a corporation in the control of which he has no 
voice, being constrained to do and say what he is 
told and not what he thinks to be wise or just. 

Industrial efficiency can never be attained un- 
til the individual worker has the same sense of re- 
sponsibility and of pride in his work that an artist 
has. Our industrial system is still in the pastoral 
stage, so far as the great mass of workers is con- 
cerned, i. e. it is paternalistic. A few men we call 
capitalists have patriarchal authority. They alone 
have initiative, and they alone control the business 
and claim the product. The workers do only what 
they are told. They are treated as minors. They 
have no responsibility for the fate of the business, 
and no incentive to express their individuality. 

It is important to note further that opportunity 
and incentive are not only necessary to efficiency 
but necessary to contentment and happiness. Peace 
and joy are not realized by mere quantity of income 
or wages, however large, but from the expression 
of man's constructive and self-assertive instincts, 
and his feeling of comradeship, partnership, and re- 
sponsibility in the world's work. In industry as in 
politics, paternalism belongs to the infantile stage 
of evolution, and must give way to some form of 
democracy. 

Industrial democracy, which seems to be the 
goal of industrial evolution, will necessitate an abso- 
lute cessation of any coercive means of adjusting 
controversies between labor and capital, such as the 



68 Democracy In America 

strike and lockout. The time has come when the 
public should no longer allow its interests to be 
jeopardized by a coercive warfare betv/een organ- 
ized classes. As justice takes the place of force in 
the political world, so it should supersede force in 
the industrial world. We have had all era of pre- 
datory capital, and we are now in an era of preda- 
tory labor. And the public has submitted to the 
former, and now submits to the latter, with a supine- 
ness which will be the amazement of the future 
historian. No people can claim to be a real democ- 
racy so long as individuals or classes are allowed to 
use coercion as a means of settling their quarrels. 

And finally, what is the meaning of all of our 
strenuous efforts and great accumulation of wealth? 
What are we doing with our enormous output? Are 
we using it to realize some conscious ideal, or are 
we allowing it merely to breed chaos and vexatious 
problems for the next generation? 

Quite recently, the English author, H. G. Wells, 
made a tour of our country with a view of discover- 
ing if there was any national purpose behind all of 
the big things we were doing over here. "1 have 
been reading," he says, ''what I can find about that 
in books for some time, and now I want to cross the 
Atlantic, more particularly for that, to question 
more or less openly certain Americans, not only men 
and women, but the mute expressive presences of 
house and appliance, of statue, flag and public build- 
ing, and the large collective visages of crowds, what 
it is all up to, what it thinks it is all after, how far 
it means to escape or improve upon its purely ma- 



Industrial Life 69 

terial destinies? I went over there to find whatever 
consciousness or vague consciousness of a common 
purpose there may be, what is their American Uto- 
pia, how much will there is shaping to attain it, how 
much capacity goes with the will — what, in short, 
there is in America, over and above the mere me- 
chanical consequences of scattering multitudes of 
energetic Europeans athwart a vast healthy, pro- 
ductive and practically empty continent in the 
temperate zone."* Mr Wells came and saw and 
doubted. Behind all of our stir and things gigan- 
tic he wrote a huge question mark. 

Perhaps the answer to his queries may be found 
in the study of our domestic, political, religious and 
aesthetic life. 

* p. le. 



CHAPTER IV. 
THE AMERICAN WOMEN. 

BEAUTY, INDIVIDUALITY, VARIETY OF TYPES AND INTEL- 
LECTUAL CULTURE OF AMERICAN WOMEN— COM- 
MENTS OF OSCAR WILDE, MATTHEW ARNOLD, DE 
TOCQUEVILLE AND OTHERS— FREEDOM ENJOYED BY 
WOMEN — CAREERS OF USEFULNESS OPEN TO 
WOMEN— WOMEN SUPERIOR IN CULTURE TO MEN- 
EXERCISE GREAT INFLUENCE UPON THE NATION— 
AND THREATEN TO GIVE AMERICAN CULTURE A 
FEMININE STAMP — UNDEMOCRATIC SPIRIT OF 
WOMEN SHOWN IN THEIR OSTENTATION IN DRESS 
AND BONDAGE TO FASHION. 

Foreign critics, almost without a single excep- 
tion, are profoundly impressed, in one way or an- 
other, by the personality of American women. Many 
writers consider the American women strikingly 
beautiful. James S. Buckingham, writing of his 
visit to America in 1824, says that the could never 
traverse Broadway "without seeing more female 
beauty, and general proofs of competency and com- 
fort among all classes than in any city in Europe." * 
Of American women, William Archer observes 
that, 'The average of beauty is certainly very 
high in New York. I will not say higher than in 
London, for there too it is remarkable; but this I 
will say, that night after night I have looked around 
the audiences in New York theatres, and found a 

*I. 20. 

[70] 



The American Women 71 

clear majority of notably good-looking women. 
There are few European cities where one could hope 
to make the same observation. It is especially to be 
noted, I think, that the American lady has the art of 
growing old with comely dignity."* Sir 
Lepel Griffin, who generally disliked everything 
American, including the women, asserts that ''More 
pretty faces are to be seen in a single day in London 
than in a month in the States. The average of beauty 
is far higher in Canada, and the American town in 
which most pretty women are noticeable is Detroit, 
on the Canadian border and containing many Cana- 
dian residents. In the Western States beauty is con- 
spicuous by its absence, and in the Eastern towns, 
Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, it 
is to be chiefly found."** 

But whatever may be the opinion of the for- 
eigner as to the beauty of American women, he is 
sure to find in them something of extraordinary 
interest. "The fact remains," says Muirhead, ''that 
almost every book on the United States contains a 
chapter devoted explicitly to the female citizen ; and 
the inevitableness of the record must have some 
solid ground of reason behind or below it." t 
* * * <<j cannot conclude without paying a trib- 
ute of respect to the exalted character of the Amer- 
ican ladies. They certainly take the precedence of 
the other sex, both in moral excellence and intel- 
lectual refinement."tf 

One of the charms of American women seems 
to consist in their individuality, and great variety of 

* p. 54. *■* p. 49. t p. 4.1. •.'■i p. 13<1. 



72 Democracy In America 

types. In European society, according to Muirhead, 
you meet with women who represent only two or 
three patterns. ''In the United States every new girl 
is a sensation. Society consists of a series of sur- 
prises. Expectation is continually piqued. * * * 
Free from any sense of inherited or conventional 
superiority or inferiority, as devoid of the brutality 
of condescension as of the meanness of toadyism, 
she combines in a strangely attractive way the charm 
of eternal womanliness with the latest aroma of a 
progressive century."* 

Oscar Wilde, addressing a London audience 
after his return from the United States, described 
the American woman as "the most fascinating little 
despot m the world, an oasis of picturesque unrea- 
sonableness in a dreadful desert of common sense." 

Speaking of the American women, Matthew 
Arnold remarks, that ''almost every one acknowl- 
edges that there is a charm in American women — a 
charm which you find in almost all of them, wher- 
ever you go. It is the charm of a natural manner, 
a manner not self-conscious, artificial, and con- 
strained. It may not be a beautiful manner always, 
but is almost always a natural manner, a free and 
happy manner; and this gives pleasure. Here we 
have, undoubtedly, a note of civilization, and an evi- 
dence, at the same time, of the good effect of equal- 
ity upon social life and manners. I have often heard 
it observed that a perfectly natural manner is as 
rare among English women of the middle classes as 

*p. 53. 



The American Women 73 

it is general among American women of like con- 
ditions with them."* 

De Tocqueville expresses his estimate of Amer- 
ican women as follows: 

"I have nowhere seen woman occupying a 
loftier position; and if I were asked, now that I am 
drawing to the close of this work, in which I have 
spoken of so many important things done by the 
Americans, to what the singular prosperity and 
growing strength of that people ought mainly to be 
attributed, I should reply — to the superiority of their 
women."** 

"The European visitor to the United States," 
says Muirhead, *'has to write about the American 
women because they bulk so largely in his view, be- 
cause they seem so essertUl and so prominent a 
feature of American life, because their relative im- 
portance and interest impress him as greater than 
those of women in the lands of the Old World, be- 
cause they seem, to him to embody in so eminent a 
measure that intancrible equalitv of American^'pm, 
the existence, or indeed the possibility, of which is 
so hotly denied by some Americans."! 

Attempting to explain why the American wo- 
men are so much superior to American men, Muir- 
head observes that, "The average American woman 
is distinctly more different from her average Eng- 
lish sister than is the case with their respective 
brothers. The training of the English girl starts 
from the very beginning on a different basis from 

*p. 168. **II. 224. :.p. 46. 



74 Democracy In America 

that of the boy; she is taught to restrain her im- 
pulses, while his are allowed much freer scope; the 
sister is expected to defer to the brother from the 
time she can walk or talk. In America this differ- 
ence of training is constantly tending to the vanish- 
ing point. The American woman has never learned 
to play second fiddle." * * * 

''The American woman, too, has had more 
time than the American man to cultivate the more 
amiable — if you will, the more showy qualities of 
American civilization. The leisured class of England 
consists of both sexes, that of America practically 
of one onl}^ The problem of the American men has 
so far been mainly to subdue a new continent to the 
human uses, while the woman has been sacrificing 
on the altar of the Graces. Hence the wider culture 
and the more liberal views are often found in the 
sex from which the European does not expect them ; 
hence the woman of New York and other American 
cities is often conspicuously superior to her husband 
in looks, manners and general intelligence. This 
has been denied by champions of the America.T) man ; 
but the observation of the writer, whatever it may 
he worth, would deny the denial. '* * * * 

''Among the most searching tests of the state 
of civilization reached by a country are the char- 
acter of its roads, its minimizing of noise, and the 
position of its women. If the United States does not 
stand very high on the application of the first and 
second tests, its name assuredly leads all the rest in 
the third."t 

='' p. 49. ^ ]). ri9. 



The American Women 75 

Observing the great freedom enjoyed by Amer- 
ican women, De Tocqueville says, ''Amongst almost 
all Protestant nations young women are far more 
the mistresses of their own actions than they are in 
Catholic countries. This independence is still 
greater in Protestant countries, like England, which 
have retained or acquired the right of self-govern- 
ment; the spirit of freedom is then infused into the 
domestic circle by political habits and by religious 
opinions. In the United States the doctrines of Pro- 
testantism are combined with great political free- 
dom and a most democratic state of society; and no- 
where are young women surrendered so early or so 
completely to their own guidance. Long before an 
American girl arrives at the age of marriage, her 
emancipation from maternal control begins ; she has 
scarcely ceased to be a child when she already thinks 
for herself, speaks with freedom, and acts on her 
own impulse. The great scene of the world is con- 
stantly open to her view ; far from seeking conceal- 
ment, it is every day disclosed to her more com- 
pletely, and she is taught to survey it with a firm 
and calm gaze. Thus the vices and dangers of so- 
ciety are early revealed to her; as she sees them 
clearly, she views them without illusions, and braves 
them without fear; for she is full of reliance on her 
own strength, and her reliance seems to be shared 
by all who are about her. An American girl scarcely 
ever displays that virginal bloom in the midst of 
young desires, or that innocent and ingenuous grace 
which usually attends the European woman in the 
transition from girlhood to youth. It is rarely that 



76 Democracy In America 

an American woman at any age displays childish 
timidity or ignorance. Like the young women of 
Europe, she seeks to please, but she knows precisely 
the cost of pleasing. If she does not abandon her- 
self to evil, at least she knows that it exists; and she 
is remarkable rather for purity of manners than for 
chastity of mind. I have been frequently surprised, 
and almost frightened, at the singular address and 
happy boldness with which young women in Amer- 
ica contrive to manage their thoughts and their lan- 
guage amidst all the difficulties of stimulating con- 
versation; a philosopher would have stumbled at 
every step along the narrow path which they trod 
without accidents and without effort. It is easy in- 
deed to perceive that, even amidst the independence 
of early youth, an American woman is always mis- 
tress of herself; she indulges in all permitted pleas- 
ures, without yielding herself up to any of them ; and 
her reason never allows the reins of self-guidance to 
drop ; though it often seems to hold them loosely. 

**In France, where remnants of every age are 
still so strangely mingled in the opinions and tastes 
of the people, women commonly receive a reserved, 
retired, and almost cloistral education, as they did in 
aristocratic times ; and then they are suddenly aban- 
doned, without a guide and without assistance, in 
the midst of all the irregularities inseparable from 
democratic society. The Americans are more con- 
sistent. They have found out that in a democracy 
the independence of individuals cannot fail to be 
very great, youth premature, tastes ill-restrained, 
customs fleeting, public opinion often settled and 



The American Women 77 

powerless, paternal authority weak, and marital 
authority contested. Under these circumstances, 
believing that they had little chance of repressing in 
women the most vehement passions of the human 
heart, they held that the surer way was to teach her 
the art of combating those passions for herself. As 
they could not prevent her virtue from being ex- 
posed to frequent danger, they determined that she 
should know how^ best to defend it; and more reli- 
ance was placed on the free vigor of her will than 
on safeguards which have been shaken or over- 
thrown. Instead, then, of inculcating mistrust of her- 
self, they constantly seek to enhance their confidence 
in her own strength of character. As it is neither 
possible nor desirable to keep a young woman in per- 
petual or complete ignorance, they hasten to give 
her a precocious knowledge on all subjects. Far. 
from hiding the corruptions of the world from her, 
they prefer that she should see them at once and 
train herself to shun them ; and they hold it of more 
importance to protect her conduct than to be over- 
scrupulous of her innocence."* 

The Englishman, E. F. Abdy, who visited Amer- 
ica in 1833, says, ''A Londoner, and still more a 
Parisian, on his first arrival at this Queen of Trans- 
Atlantic cities, is not a little surprised at the num- 
ber of well-dressed young women he meets along 
the Broadway, without a chaperon or a servant. In 
no European city of equal population would the fair 
sex be permitted or inclined to enjoy such liberty as 
the state of public morals, and their own virtues, 
have secured to the ladies of New York."t 



* II, 210. t P 69. 



78 Democracy In America 

"The American girl," in the opinion of Emily 
Faithfull, writing in 1883, "is happily not yet ham- 
pered by the arbitrary red-tape regulation which 
weighs down the souls of some of her less fortunate 
European sisters. Pleasant social intercourse with 
other girls' brothers is not fenced in with French or 
even English rigorous restrictions. She may receive 
an afternoon call from a gentleman without having 
gone through, or even thought of, the formality of 
a definite engagement to marry him. He asks at the 
door for her — not for her mother or chaperon — and 
she proceeds to the drawing room for a tete a tete 
in the most natural matter-of-fact wsty possible. In 
some circles she still goes out driving or sleighing, 
or even to the theatre, with the young men of her 
acquaintance, without getting herself talked about, 
or becoming the scandal of the neighborhood as she 
would for similar freedoms in Great Britain."* 

In reference to the freedom of American wo- 
men, Bryce remarks that "Custom, allows women a 
greater measure of freedom in doing what they will 
and going where they please than they have in any 
European country, except, perhaps, in Russia. No 
one is surprised to see a lady travel alone from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, nor a girl of the richer class 
walking alone through the streets of a city. If a 
lady enters some occupation heretofore usually re- 
served to men, she is subject to less censorious re- 
mark than would follow her in Europe, though in 
this matter the society of Eastern cities is hardly so 
liberal as that of the West. 

* p. 339. 



The xAmerican Women 79 

''Social intercourse between youths and maid- 
ens is everywhere more easy and unrestrained than 
in England or Germany, not to speak of France. Yet 
there are considerable differences between the East- 
ern cities, whose usages have begun to approximate 
to those of Europe, and other parts of the country. 
In the rural districts, and generally all over the West, 
young men and girls are permitted to walk together, 
drive together, go out to parties, and even to public 
entertainments together, without the presence of any 
third person, who can be supposed to be looking 
after or taking charge of the girl. So a girl may, 
if she pleases, keep up a correspondence with a 
young man, nor will her parents think of interfering. 
She will have her ov^n friends, who, when they call 
at her house, ask for her, and are received by her, it 
may be alone; because they are not deemed to be 
necessarily the friends of her parents also, nor even 
of her sisters. In the cities of the Atlantic States, 
it is perhaps less usual than it would once have been 
for a young man to take a young lady out for a soli- 
tary drive ; and he would not in all sets be permitted 
to escort her alone to the theater. But girls still go 
without chaperons to dances, tlie hostess being 
deemed to act as chaperon for all her guests; and 
as regards both correspondence and the right to have 
one's own circle of acquaintance, the usage even of 
New York or Boston allows more liberty than does 
that of London or Edinburgh. It was at one time, 
and it may possibly still be, not uncommon for a 
group of young people who know one another well 
to make up an autumn 'party in the woods.' They 



80 Democracy In America 

choose some mountain and forest region, engage 
three or four guides, embark with guns and fishing 
rods, tents, blankets, and a stock of groceries, and 
pass in boats up the rivers and across the lakes of 
this wild country through sixty or seventy miles of 
trackless forest to their chosen camping ground at 
the foot of some tall rock that rises from the still 
crystal of the lake. Here they build their bark hut, 
and spread their beds of the elastic and fragrant 
hemlock boughs; the youths roam about during the 
day, tracking the deer, the girls read and work and 
bake the corn cakes; at night there is a merry gath- 
ering round the fire or a row in the soft moonlight. 
On these expeditions brothers will take their sisters 
and cousins, who bring perhaps some women friends 
with them ; the brothers' friends will come too ; and 
all will live together in a fraternal way for weeks or 
months, though no elderly relative or married lady 
be of the JDarty."* 

Herbert Spencer believed that there was a nec- 
essary connection between democracy and domestic 
freedom. ''Note first, the fact," says he, "significant 
of the relation between political despotism and do- 
mestic despotism, that, according to Legouve, Na- 
poleon I said to the Council of State, 'un meri doit 
avoir un empire absolu sur les actions de sa f emme' ; 
and that sundry provisions of the Code, as inter- 
preted by Pothier, carry out this dictum. Further, 
note that, according to de Segur, the position of 
women in France declined under the Empire; and 
that 'it was not only in the higher ranks that this 

* II. 803. 



The American Women 81 

nullity of women existed. * * * ^py^^ habit of 
fighting filled men with a kind of contempt and as- 
perity which made them often forget even the re- 
gard which they owed to weakness/ Passing over 
less essential contrasts now presented by the leading 
European peoples, and considering chiefly the status 
as displayed in the daily lives of the poorer rather 
than the richer, it is manifest that the mass of women 
have harder lots where militant organization and 
activity predominate, than they have where there is 
a predominance of industrial organization and ac- 
tivity. The sequence observed by travelers in Afri- 
ca, that in proportion as the men are occupied in 
war more labor falls on the women, is a sequence 
which France and Germany show us. Social 
sustentation has to be carried on ; and necessarily 
the more males are drafted off for military service, 
the more females must be called on to fill their places 
as workers. Hence the extent to which in Germany 
women are occupied in rough out-of-door tasks — 
digging, wheeling, carrying burdens; hence the ex- 
tent to which in France heavy field operations are 
shared in by women. That the English housewife 
is less a drudge than her German sister, that among 
shopkeepers in England she is not required to take 
so large a share in the business as she is among shop- 
keepers in France, and that in England the out-of- 
door work done by women is both smaller in quan- 
tity and lighter in kind, is clear, as it is clear that 
this difference is associated with a lessened demand 
on the male population for purposes of offense and 
defense. And there may be added the fact of kin- 



82 Democracy In America 

dred meaning, that in the United States, where till 
the late war the degree of militancy had been so 
small, and the industrial type of social structure and 
action so predominant, women have reached a high- 
er status than anywhere else."* 

According to Bryce, the American women have 
made a very good use of their freedom, having suc- 
cessfully taken up many lines of private and public 
service. *'Women," he says, ''have made way into 
most of the professions more largely than in Europe. 
In many of the Northern cities they practice as phy- 
sicians, and seem to have found little or no prejudice 
to overcome. Medical schools have been provided 
for them in some universities. It was less easy for 
them to obtain admission to the bar, yet several have 
secured this, and the number seems to increase. 
They mostly devote themselves to the attorney's 
part of the work rather than to court practice. One 
edited the Illinois Law Journal with great accept- 
ance. Several have entered the Christian ministry, 
though, I think, chiefly in what may be called the 
minor sects, rather than in any of the five or six great 
denominations, whose spirit is more conservative. 
Some have obtained success as professional lectur- 
ers, and not a few are journalists or reporters. One 
hears little of them in engineering. They are seldom 
to be seen in the offices of hotels, but many, more 
than in Europe, are employed as clerks or secretaries, 
both in some of the government departments, and 
by telegraphic and other companies, as well as in 
publishing houses and other kinds of business where 

* Principles of Sociology, I, 764 



The American Women 83 

physical strength is not needed. Typewriting work 
is largely in their hands. They form an overwhelm- 
ing majority of the teachers in public schools for 
boys as well as for girls, and are thought to be bet- 
ter teachers, at least for the younger sort, than men 
are. No class prejudice forbids the daughters of 
clergymen or lawyers of the best standing to teach 
in elementary schools. Taking one thing with an- 
other, it is easier for women to find a career, to ob- 
tain remunerative work either of literary or of com- 
mercial or mechanical kind, than in any part of Eu- 
rope. Popular sentiment is entirely in favor of giv- 
ing them every chance, as witness the Constitution 
of those Western States which expressly provide 
that they shall be equally admissible to all profes- 
sions or employments. They have long borne a con- 
spicuous part in the promotion of moral and philan- 
thropic causes. They were among the earliest, most 
zealous, and most effective apostles of the anti-slav- 
ery movement, and have taken an equally active 
share in the temperance agitation. Not only has the 
Women's Christian Temperance Union with its 
numerous branches been the most powerful agency 
directed against the traffic in intoxicants, particu- 
larly in the Western States, but individual women 
have thrown themselves into the struggle with ex- 
traordinary zeal. Some time ago, during what was 
called the women's whiskey war, they forced their 
way in drinking saloons, bearded the dealers and 
adjured the tipplers to come out. At elections, 
at which the prohibition issue is prominent, 
ladies will sometimes assemble outside the polls and 



84 Democracy In America 

sing hymns at the voters. Their services in dealing 
v^ith pauperism, charities, and reformatory institu- 
tions have been inestimable. In New York when 
legislation was needed for improving the administra- 
tion of charities, it was a lady (belonging to one of 
the oldest and most respected families in the coun- 
try) who went to Albany, and by placing the case 
forcibly before the State legislature there, succeeded 
in obtaining the required measure. Many others 
have followed her example with the best results. 
The Charity Organization Societies of the great 
cities are largely managed by women ; and the free- 
dom they enjoy makes them invaluable agents in 
this work, which the inrush of new and ignorant im- 
migrants renders daily more important. So, too, 
when it became necessary after the war to find teach- 
ers for the negroes in the institutions founded for 
their benefit in the South, it was chiefly Northern 
girls who volunteered for the duty, and discharged 
it with single-minded zeal."* * * * 

'Three causes combine to create among Amer- 
ican women an average of literary taste and influ- 
ence higher than that of any European country. 
These are, the educational facilities they enjoy, the 
recognition of the equality of the sexes in the whole 
social and intellectual sphere, and the leisure which 
they possess as compared with men. In a country 
where the men are incessantly occupied at their 
business or profession, the function of keeping up 
the level of culture devolves upon women. It is safe 
in their hands. They are quick and keen-witted, 

*II, 797. 



The American Women 85 

less fond of open-air life and physical exertion than 
Englishwomen are, and obliged by the climate to 
pass a greater part of their time under shelter from 
the cold of winter and the sun of summer. For 
music and for the pictorial arts they do not yet seem 
to have formed so strong a taste as for literature, 
partly perhaps owing to the fact that in America 
the opportunities of seeing and hearing master- 
pieces, except indeed operas, are rarer than in 
Europe. But they are eager and assiduous readers 
of all such books and periodicals as do not presup- 
pose special knowledge in some branch of science or 
learning, while the number who have devoted them- 
selves to some special study and attained proficiency 
in it is large. They love society, and now there is 
hardly a village that has not its women's club where 
papers are read and all sorts of current questions 
are discussed, often with the incidental results of 
enabling those of slender means but cultivated tastes 
to come into social contact with those of higher posi- 
tion. The fondness for sentiment, especially moral 
and domestic sentiment, which is often observed as 
characteristic of American taste in literature, seems 
to be mainly due to the influence of women, for they 
form not only the larger part of the reading public, 
but an independent-minded part, not disposed to 
adopt the canons laid down by men, and their pref- 
erences count for more in the opinions and predilec- 
tions of the whole nation than is the case in England. 
Similarly the number of women who write is much 
larger in America than in Europe. Fiction, essays, 
and poetry are naturally their favorite provinces. 



86 Democracy In America 

In poetry more particularly, many whose names are 
quite unknown in Europe have attained widespread 
fame. 

"Some one may ask how far the differences be- 
tween the position of women in America and their 
position in Europe are due to democracy, or if not 
to this, then to what other cause. 

**They are due to democratic feeling in so far 
as they spring from the notion that all men are 
free and equal, possessed of certain inalienable 
rights, and owning certain corresponding duties. 
The root idea of democracy cannot stop at defining 
men as male human beings, any more than it could 
ultimately stop at defining them as white human 
beings. For many years the Americans believed 
in equality with the pride of discoverers as well as 
with the fervor of apostles. Accustomed to apply 
it to all sorts and conditions of men, they were 
naturally the first to apply it to women also ; not, 
indeed, as respects politics, but in all the social as 
well as legal relations of life. Democracy is in 
America more respectful of the individual, less 
disposed to infringe his freedom or subject him to 
any sort of legal or family control, than it has 
shown itself in Continental Europe, and this regard 
for the individual inured to the benefit of women. 
Of other causes that have worked in the same direc- 
tion two may be mentioned. One in the usage of 
the Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Baptist 
churches, under which a woman who is a member 
of the congregation has the same rights in choos- 
ing a deacon, elder, or pastor, as a man has. An- 



The American Women 87 

other is the fact that among the westwai'd-moving 
settlers women were at first* few in number, and 
•were therefore treated with special respect. The 
habit then formed was retained as the communi- 
ties grew, and propagated itself all over the 
country. 

''What have been the results on the character 
and usefulness of women themselves? 

*'0n the whole favorable. Though critics 
dwell on some drawbacks, it is a gain that Amer- 
ican women have been admitted to a wider life 
and more variety of career than is enjoyed in Con- 
tinental Europe. Thus there has been produced a 
sort of independence and a capacity for self-help 
which are increasingly valuable as the number of 
unmarried women increases. Many resources are 
now open to an American unmarried woman who 
has to lead a solitary life, not merely in the way 
of employment, but for the occupation of her mind 
and tastes."* 

Of the usefulness of the American women, 
Miinsterberg states that 'The bread-winning ac- 
tivity of women is, however, only a fraction of their 
activity outside of the home. Of the 39,000,000 
men in the country, 23,754,000 have an occupation, 
and of the 37,000,000 women only 5,319,000 work 
for a living; it is clear that the great majority of 
grown-up women earn nothing. But nobody who 
knows American life would take these women who 
earn no wages from the list of those who exert a 
great influence outside of the family circle, and 

*II. 809. 



88 Democracy In America 

assert themselves in the social organization. Be- 
tween the two broad oceans there is hardly any 
significant movement outside of trade and politics 
which is not aided by unpaid women, who work 
purely out of ideal motives. Vanity, ambition, self- 
importance, love of diversion, and social aspirations 
of all kinds, of course, play a part, but the actual 
labor which women perform in the interests of the 
church or school, of public welfare, social reform, 
music, art, popular education, care of the sick, beau- 
tification and sanitation of cities, every day and 
everywhere, represents incontestably a powerful in- 
born idealism."* * * * 

''One might say that the European woman 
works because the land is too poor to support the 
family by the labor of the man alone. The Ameri- 
can woman works because she wants her own 
career. In traveling through Europe, one notices 
women toiling painfully in the fields; this is not 
necessary in America, unless among the negroes. 
Passing through New England, one sees a hammock 
in front of every farm house, and often catches the 
sound of a piano ; the wives and daughters have 
never thought of working in the fields. But women 
crowd into all occupations in the cities, in order to 
have an independent existence and to make them- 
selves useful. They would rather work in a fac- 
tory or teach than to stay on the farm and spend 
their time at house work or embroidery. 

"As a matter of course, very many families 
are actually in need, and innumerable motives may 

* p. 570. 



The American Women 89 

lead a woman to the earning of a living. But if 
one compares the changes in the statistics of differ- 
ent employments, and looks into the psychology of 
the different kinds of occupation, one sees clearly 
that the spirit of self-determination is the decisive 
factor, and that women compete most strongly in 
the professions which involve some rational inter- 
est, and that they know where it pays to 6rowd the 
men out."* 

Munsterherg thinks that there is a decided dif- 
ference in the cultural capacity of men and women. 
*'The feminine mind," he says, **has the tendency 
to unify all ideas, while a man rather separates 
independent classes. Each of these positions has 
advantages and drawbacks. The immediate prod- 
ucts of the feminine temperament are tactfulness 
and aesthetic insight, sure instinct, enthusiasm, and 
purity; and, on the other hand, a lack of logical 
consecutiveness, a tendency to over-hasty general- 
ization, under-estimation of the abstract and the 
deep, and an inclination to be governed by feeling 
and emotion. Even these weaknesses may be beau- 
tiful in domestic life and attractive in the social 
sphere ; they soften the hard and bitter life of men. 
But women have not the force to perform those 
public duties of civilization which need the harder 
logic of man. If the entire culture of the nation is 
womanized, it will be in the end weak and without 
decisive influence on the progress of the world. 

"The intellectual high life in colleges and uni- 
versities, which seem to speak more clearly for the 

* p. of)T. 



90 Democracy In America 

intellectual equality of women, brings out exactly 
this difference That which is accomplishedby the 
best w^omen's colleges is exemplary and admirable; 
but it is in a world which is, after all, a small arti- 
ficial world, with all rough places smoothed over 
and illumined with a soft light instead of the hard 
daylight. Although in the mixed universities women 
often do better than men, it is not to be forgotten 
that the American lecture system, with its many 
examinations, puts a higher value on industry, at- 
tention, and good will than on critical acumen or 
logical creativeness. It cannot be denied that, even 
a short time since, the American university culti- 
vated in every department the spirit of learning 
rather than of investigation — was reproductive 
rather than productive — and that the more recent 
development which has laid the emphasis on pro- 
ductive investigation has gone on for the most part 
in the leading Eastern universities, such as Harvard. 
Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton, 
where women are still not admitted, while the 
Western universities, and most of all the state uni- 
versities, which are found only in the West, where 
women are in a majority, belong in many respects 
to the old type. To be sure, there are several 
American women whose scientific work is admir- 
able, and to be classed with the best professional 
achievements of the country; but they are still rare 
exceptions. The tendency to learn rather than to 
produce pervades all the great masses of women; 
they study with extraordinary zeal up to the point 
where critical production should begin, and there 



The American Women 91 

they are all too apt to stop. And unless one per- 
sistently looks at the very few exceptions, one 
would hardly assert that the true spirit of science 
could unfold and grow if American women were 
to be its only guardians. 

, 'This distinction is much plainer in the lower 
walks of life. The self-educated American man 
refrains from judging what is beyond his scope; 
but the American woman who has scarcely a shred 
of education looks in vain for any subject on which 
she has not firm convictions already at hand, and 
her influence upon public opinion — politics always 
apart — spins a web of triviality and misconception 
over the whole culture. Cobwebs are not ropes, 
and a good broom can sweep them down; but the 
arrogance of this feminine lack of knowledge is the 
symptom of a profound trait in the female soul, and 
points to dangers springing from the domination of 
women in the intellectual life. In no other civilized 
land is scientific medicine so systematically hin- 
dered by quack doctors, patent medicines, and men- 
tal healing; the armies of uneducated women pro- 
tect them. And in no other civilized land are 
ethical conceptions so worm-eaten by superstitions 
and spiritualistic hocus-pocus; hysterical women 
carry the day. In no other country is the steady 
and sound advance of social and pedagogical re- 
form so checked by whimsies and short-lived inno- 
vations, and good sound work held back by the par- 
tisans of confused ideas; here the women work 
havoc with their social and pedagogical alarms."* 

*p. 587. 



92 Democracy In America 

Munsterberg does not believe that it is a good 
thing for the culture of our nation to bear so much 
of a feminine stamp. He says, ''It is indubitable 
that this undertaking of the burdens of intellectual 
culture by women has been necessary to the na- 
tion's progress — a kind of division of labor imper- 
atively indicated by the tremendous economic and 
political duties which have preoccupied the men. 
No European country has ever had to accomplish 
economically, technically, and politically, in so 
short a time, that which the United States has ac- 
complished in the last fifty years in perfecting its 
civilization. The strength of the men has been so 
thoroughly enlisted that intellectual culture could 
not have been developed or even maintained if the 
zeal and earnestness of women had not for a time 
taken up the work. But is this to be only for a 
time? Will the man bethink himself that his po- 
litical and economic one-sidedness will in the end 
hurt the nation? This is one of the greatest ques- 
tions for the future of this country. It is not a 
question of women's retrograding or losing any of 
her splendid acquirements; no one could wish that 
this fine intellectuality, this womanly seriousness, 
this desire for a meaning in her life should be 
thoughtlessly sacrificed, not that the sisters and 
mothers of the nation should ever become mere 
dolls or domestic machines. Nothing of this should 
be lost or needs be lost. But a compensatory move- 
ment must be undertaken by the men of the coun- 
try in order to make up for the amateurish super- 



The American Women 93 

ficiality and an inconsequential logic of the emo- 
tions. 

"In itself, the intellectual domination of 
women will have the tendency to strengthen itself, 
the more the higher life bears the feminine stamp. 
For by so much, men are less attracted to it. Thus 
the number of male school teachers becomes smaller 
all the time, because the majority of women teach- 
ers makes the school more and more a place where 
a man does not feel at home. But other factors in 
public opinion work strongly in the opposite direc- 
tion ; industrial life has made its great strides, the 
land is opened up, the devastations of the Civil 
War are repaired, internal disturbances have 
yielded to internal unity, recognition among the 
world powers has been won, and within a short 
time the wealth of the country has increased many 
fold. It will be a natural reaction if the energies 
of men are somewhat withdrawn from industry and 
agriculture, from politics and war, and once more 
bestowed upon things intellectual. The strength 
of this reaction will decide whether the self-as- 
sertion of the American women will, in the end, 
have been an unalloyed blessing to the country or 
an affliction. Women will never contribute mo- 
mentously to the culture of the world by remaining 
intellectually celibate."* 

One of the traits of American women, not at 
all to their credit, and altogether inconsistent with 
the spirit of democracy, is that of ostentation, and 
even vulgar extravagance, in dress. This trait has 

* p. 589. 



94 Democracy In America 

been noted by foreign travelers from the earliest 
times to the present. It is a survival, and morbid 
excrescence, of the old English aristocracy from 
which it emerged. In aristocratic societies people 
enjoy a distinction which comes by birth, and 
while they dress expensively, they are not depend- 
ent upon dress to mark themselves off from the 
rabble; but in a democracy, where equality reigns, 
and no one is distinguished by birth, there is the 
greatest tendency, among the undistinguished who 
covet the exclusiveness of aristocracy, to separate 
themselves from the commonalty by ostentatious 
expenditure upon dress, and where possible also, 
upon jewelry, dwelling-houses and furniture. Until 
very recently, it was the fashion, even among the 
professional men of America, such as doctors, law- 
yers, preachers, and college professors, to mark 
themselves off from the rest of mankind by wear- 
ing long frock-tail coats. 

Buckingham, writing in 1842, says that "the 
dress of the American women is of the most gay 
as well as expensive description; and, except in the 
articles of jewelry, of which there is rarely any 
display, it may be asserted, that the gowns, collars, 
pocket-handkerchiefs, and bonnets of a young 
American female, married or unmarried, and of no 
higher rank than the wife or daughter of a shop- 
keeper of a small business, and no capital, are in 
general more costly than those of a lady of the 
most wealthy classes in England, except perhaps 
those of the first rank of fashion in the metropolis. 
This display of dress is made more ostentatiously 



The American Women 95 

also in the public streets than is ever done in 
Europe, where the out-of-door costume is generally 
more remarkable for comfort than for show. But 
in a walk through Chestnut street, in a fine after- 
noon, you may meet in the course of a single hour, 
perhaps 200 elegantly dressed females taking their 
after-dinner promenade, to see and to be seen, 
with more rich silks, fur, and feathers than you 
would see in Regent street, in London, in a whole 
day."* 

Concerning the extravagance of the American 
women of today, De Constant has to say that, *'At 
10 o'clock, after the babies have been out for some 
time, the American society woman appears — 
'incessu patuit deaf — the greatest ornament and the 
highest expression of luxury in the United States. 
I see her move on, sure of herself, well aware of 
her power to please and glad of it. She walks 
with her light and queenly step, just as she will 
make her entrance this evening into some recep- 
tion room, where I shall no doubt meet her and 
hear her discuss Paris, in French, with her friends 
and rivals as beautifully dressed and fascinating 
as herself, altogether in a group like a bouquet of 
living flowers. Every one wears a crown of light 
hair, as luminous as a halo. Her complexion is 
always fresh and without a trace of fatigue. She 
is glad to be alive. She is a blossom in a chalice 
of silky fabrics. Carelessly fastened round her 
neck is a pearl necklace falling on her corsage like 
a ribbon. 

• p. 569. 



96 Democracy In America 

**0, American women, elective queens, an aris- 
tocracy in a democracy, what sums of money your 
husbands, your fathers and the whole of your 
country must make to go on supplying you with 
dress! It is some consolation to think that a large 
part of the money will be spent in Paris."* 

Bryce makes the observation that, *ln the 
farther West, that is to say, beyond the Mississippi, 
in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific States, one is 
much struck by what seems the absence of the hum- 
blest class of women. The trains are full of poorly 
dressed and sometimes (though less frequently) 
rough-mannered men. One discovers no women 
whose dress or air marks them out as the wives, 
daughters, or sisters of these men, and wonders 
whether the male population is celibate, and if so, 
why there are so many women. Closer observation 
shows that the wives, daughters, and sisters are 
there, only their attire and manner are those of 
what Europeans would call middle class and not 
working class people. This is partly due to the 
fact that Western men affect a rough dress. Still 
one may say that the remark so often made that 
the masses of the American people correspond to 
the middle class of Europe is more true of the 
women than of the men, and is more true of them 
in the rural districts and in the West than it is of 
the inhabitants of Atlantic cities. I remember to 
have been dawdling in a book-store in a small town 
in Oregon when a lady entered to inquire if a 
monthly magazine, whose name was unknown to 

* p. 284. 



The American Women 97 

me, had yet arrived. When she was gone I asked 
the salesman who she was, and what was the 
periodical she wanted. He answered that she was 
the wife of a railway workman, that the magazine 
was a journal of fashions, and that the demand 
for such journals was large and constant among 
women of the wage-earning class in the town. 
This set me to observing female dress more closely, 
and it turned out to be perfectly true that the 
women in these little towns were following the 
Parisian fashions very closely, and were, in fact, 
ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging 
to the professional and mercantile classes."* 

There is certainly no country in the world 
where women of all classes live more under the 
tyranny of fashion than in America. Thanks to 
America's system of rapid communication and her 
art of counterfeiting, fashions spread with amazing 
rapidity, and it is necessary that the rich class 
change their styles four times a year in order to 
keep ahead of the shop-girl and the chamber- 
maid. American women, with all of their individu- 
ality, intellectual culture, and zeal for domestic, 
economic, and political emancipation, have made 
very feeble headway against the slavery of fashion ; 
nor have they in the matter of dress kept step with 
the march of democratic ideas. Even during the 
World War, when they were preaching and prac- 
ticing conservation of food — eating brown bread 
and drinking coffee without sugar — ^they com- 
pletely capitulated to the fashion for silk hose and 

*II, 807. 



98 Democracy In America 

all kinds of silk underwear. Among college and 
high-school girls it was the exceptioM to find one 
who did not wear silk stockings. I have heard of 
several dressmakers who declare that during the 
war they were called upon to make more silk 
dresses than ever before. 

It would be unfair, however, not to mention 
that, among a small class of American women, 
there is some independence shown in regard to 
fashion, and a revolt against the ostentation of 
dress. Nothing is more characteristic of the great 
women of all countries than the simplicity of their 
tastes. As women come to have more opportuni- 
ties for a useful career, and to value more the dis- 
tinction which comes from inner worth and ability 
to serve, they will care less for the distinction 
which comes from the external and the artificial, 
and will regard every form of ostentation as a vul- 
garity. 

It would also be unfair not to admit man's re- 
sponsibility for the national extravagance in dress 
and bondage to fashion. The men generally are 
eager to have their wives enjoy some social dis- 
tinction, and rather take a pride in their flashy para- 
phernalia. Moreover, the men themselves are as 
much the slaves of fashion as the women. Com- 
menting upon this fact, T. De Witt Talmage once 
said: "Men wear all they can without interfer- 
ing with their locomotion, but man is such an 
awkward creature he cannot find any place on his 
body to hang a great many fineries. He could not 
get around in Wall Street with eight or ten flounces 



The American Women 99 

and a big handled parasol, and a mountain of back 
hair; men wear less than women, not because they 
are more moral, but because they cannot stand it. 
As it is, many of our young men are padded to a 
superlative degree, and have corns and bunions 
on every separate toe from wearing tight shoes." 

Apropos of the craze among women for silks, 
I recently learned of a poor medical student, work- 
ing his way through a university, who asked 
his girl friend if she knew of a seamstress 
whom he might get to make him a silk shirt, stat- 
ing that he could not buy one ready-made for less 
than ten or fifteen dollars. 

The self-indulgence of the American people, 
showing itself in extravagant dress and other ap- 
peals to the senses, is an obstacle to their great- 
ness. It is apt to corrupt future generations by 
drifting into a refinement of sensuality. The mod- 
ern world, and especially America, needs, for the 
inspiration of our rising generations, more men of 
the like of Socrates and Saint Paul, and more 
women of the like of Florence Nightingale and 
Jane Addams, whose wants have been so few that 
they could live for justice and the service of hu- 
manity; not the pursuit of an over-refined luxury 
for the pampering of enervated tastes, and senses 
blunted by satiety. 



CHAPTER V. 
DOMESTIC LIFE. 

AMPmiCAN WOMEN AS WIVES AND HOME-MAKERS— PUR- 
ITY OF THE MARITAL MOTIVE— MORAL STRICTNESS 
OF WOMEN BEFORE AND AFTER MARRIAGE— RESPECT 
FOR FEMALE VIRTUE— CONTRAST IN THE ATTITUDE 
OF THE AMERICAN AND THE FRENCH MEN TOWARDS 
YOUNG MARRIED WOMEN— AMERICAN W^OMEN DIS- 
LIKE DOMESTIC WORK— DECLINE IN THE BIRTH- 
RATE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

Of these American women, who are so strik- 
ing in personality as to elicit from foreigners a 
great amount of discussion, and no small amount 
of unstinted admiration, what can be said of them 
as wives and mothers? 

First of all, how does the American woman go 
about choosing a husband? In answer to this 
question, it must be said that, in entering upon the 
marriage relationship, they are credited with a 
singular purity of motive. The French observer, 
Le Roux, says, that the American ''girl forgets that 
there are other reasons besides love for marry- 
ing." * Our Scotch critic, Muirhead, says that, 
"If the sacred flame of Cupid could be ex- 
posed to the alembic of statistics, I should be sur- 
prised to hear that the love matches in the United 
States did not reach a higher percentage than 
those 'of any other nation."t Miinsterberg 

* p. 60. t P- 34. 

[100] 



Domestic Life 101 

thinks that, for American women, ''The 
purely human elements are the only ones which 
count in marriage. It is a congenial affiliation of 
two persons, without regard to social advantage or 
disadvantage, if only the persons care for each 
other. And this idea is common to the whole 
nation, and gives marriage a high moral status. 
Moreover, the surpassing education of the young 
American woman, her college life, works in one 
way to exalt marriage. If she has learned any- 
thing in her college atmosphere, it is moral seri- 
ousness. She has gone there to face duties squarely 
and energetically, to account small things small, 
and large things large; and so, when she ap- 
proaches the new duty of making a home, she over- 
comes all obstacles there with profound moral 
determination."* 

De Tocqueville observed that the American 
women were very deliberate in their matrimonial 
alliances. ''No American woman," he says, "falls 
into the toils of matrimony as into a snare held out 
to her simplicity or ignorance. She has been 
taught beforehand what is expected of her, and 
voluntarily and freely does she enter upon this 
engagement. She supports her new position with 
courage, because she chose it. As in America 
parental discipline is very relaxed and the con- 
jugal tie very strict, a young woman does not con- 
tract the latter without considerable circumspec- 
tion and apprehension. Precocious marriages are 
rare. Thus American women do not marry until 

* p. 576. 



102 Democracy In America 

their understandings are exercised and ripened; 
whereas in other countries most women generally 
begin to exercise and to ripen their understandings 
after marriage/* 

American women, according to De Tocque- 
ville, live by a strict moral code before and after 
marriage. "Although the travellers who have 
visited North America," says he, ^'differ on a great 
number of points, they all agree in remarking that 
morals are far more strict there than elsewhere. 
It is evident that on this point the Americans are 
very superior to their progenitors, the English. A 
superficial glance at the two nations will establish 
the fact. In England, as in all other countries of 
Europe, public malice is constantly attacking the 
frailties of women. Philosophers and statesmen 
are heard to deplore that morals are not sufficiently 
strict, and the literary productions of the country 
constantly lead one to suppose so. In America all 
books, novels not excepted, suppose women to be 
chaste, and no one thinks of relating affairs of gal- 
lantry. No doubt this great regularity of Ameri- 
can morals originated partly in the country, in the 
race of the people, and in their religion; but all 
these causes, which operate elsewhere, do not suf- 
fice to account for it; recourse must be had to 
some special reason. This reason appears to me to 
be the principle of equality and the institutions 
derived from it. Equality of conditions does not 
of itself engender regularity of morals, but it un- 
questionably facilitates and increases it. 



Domestic Life 103 

"Amongst aristocratic nations birth and for- 
tune frequently make two such different beings of 
man and woman, that they can never be united 
to each other. Their passions draw them together, 
but the condition of society, and the notions sug- 
gested by it, prevent them from contracting 
a permanent and ostensible tie. The necessary 
consequence is a great number of transient and 
clandestine connections. Nature secretly avenges 
herself for the constraint imposed upon her by 
the laws of man. This is not so much the case 
when the equality of conditions has SMept away 
all the imaginary, or the real, barriers which sep- 
arated man from woman. No girl then believes 
that she cannot become the wife of the man who 
loves her; and this renders all breaches of mor- 
ality before marriage very uncommon ; for, what- 
ever be the credulity of the passions, a woman will 
hardly be able to persuade herself that she is being 
loved, when her lover is perfectly free to marry 
her and does not. 

*'The same cause operates, though more in« 
directly, on married life. Nothing better serves to 
justify an illicit passion, either to the minds of 
those who have conceived it or to the world which 
looks on, than compulsory or accidental marriages. 
In a country in which a woman is always free to 
exercise her power of choosing, and in which edu- 
cation has prepared her to choose rightly, public 
opinion is inexorable to her faults. The rigor of 
the Americans arises in part from this cause. They 
consider marriage as a covenant which is often 



104 Democracy In America 

onerous, but every condition of which the parties 
are strictly bound to fulfill, because they knew all 
those conditions beforehand, and were perfectly 
free not to have contracted them."* 

Foreigners without exception seem to be 
pleased by the high respect shown to women every- 
where in America. In reference to this, De Tocque- 
ville says: *'It is true that the Americans rarely 
lavish upon w^omen those eager attentions which 
are commonly paid them in Europe; but their con- 
duct to women always implies that they suppose 
them to be virtuous and refined ; and such is the 
respect entertained for the moral freedom of the 
sex, that in the presence of a woman the most 
guarded language is used, lest her ear should be 
offended by an expression. In America a young 
unmarried woman may, alone and without fear, 
undertake a long journey. 

''The legislators of the United States, who 
have mitigated almost all the penalties of criminal 
law, still make rape a capital offense, and no crime 
is visited with more inexorable severity by public 
opinion. This may be accounted for; as the Amer- 
icans can conceive nothing more precious than a 
woman's honor, and nothing which ought so much 
to be respected as her independence, they hold 
that no punishment is too severe for the man who 
deprives her of them against her will. In France, 
where the same offense is visited with far milder 
penalties, it is frequently difficult to get a verdict 
from a jury against the prisoner. '*t 

* II, 216. t 11. 224. 



Domestic Life 105 

Charles Wagner seems to think that one of 
America's strongholds *'is respect for women ; not 
that exaggerated form of it into which Americans 
fall who treat their wives like cherished dolls; but 
the feeling of deference and consideration which 
puts into the hearts of young men and old, that 
chivalric reverence for womanhood which seems to 
me one of the most substantial elements in the 
moral equipment of a society."* 

**In one virtue," says G. W. Steevens, ''these 
(American) men furnish a shining example to all 
the world — in their devoted chivalry towards their 
women. They toil and slave, they kill themselves 
at forty, that their women may live in luxury and 
become socially and intellectually superior to them- 
selves. They do it without even an idea that there 
is any self-sacrifice in it. Whether it is good for 
the women might be doubted, but it is unspeakably 
noble and honoring to the men. The age of chiv- 
alry is not gone; until America it never came."t 

Speaking of the attitude of men towards wo- 
men, Burne-Jones says, ''Their chivalry and court- 
esy to women is very pretty, too. Women, as a 
rule, are tremendously safe with American men, 
and they know it. When all's said and done, 
America is the land for women — they are queens 
of the situation all round. The fact that they have 
an equal share with their brothers in the division 
of their parents' property, gives women in Amer- 
ica a sense of independence, a right, as it were, to 

* p. 263. t p. 313. 



106 Democracy In America 

hold up their heads in the land, which may to 
some extent unconsciously account for their indi- 
viduality, possibly even for that splendid carriage 
to which I have already alluded.''* 

Paul Bourget asks the question, **Why is the 
young married woman less courted than the young 
girl in the United States? Certain it is that in 
society you almost never hear an allusion to such 
connections as abound in Paris, and even in Lon- 
don."! The average Frenchman does 
not seem able to understand why American men 
do not seek intrigues with young married women; 
and the average American is not able to under- 
stand why Frenchmen look upon young married 
women as their prey. The security of the Amer- 
ican married woman from the courtship of miscel- 
laneous men is due to three facts. First, married 
women of all respectable circles possess a respect 
for their virtue and marriage vows which shield 
them from attack or even of suspicion. Second, 
American men, knowing that women marry with- 
out constraint, and choose the mate that they pre- 
fer to all others, scarcely ever surmise that a mar- 
ried woman is unhappy. And even when it is evi- 
dent that she is unhappy, every man knows that 
she has the privilege of divorce, and that she will 
choose her second mate within the bounds of law 
and decency. Of course, America is not without 
her dissolute class of married women, but they are 
rarely found in respectable circles, and except 
through their own bold advances, they would never 

* p. 76. tP. 100 



I 



Domestic Life 107 

be molested by men. Third, because marriages are 
based upon personal affinities, public sentiment de- 
mands universal respect for the marriage bond, and 
visits the severest penalties for any infringement 
of it. Consequently, any man who makes the 
slightest indecent advance towards a woman is lia- 
ble to be shot by her husband. In America no 
jury has been found, or can be found anywhere, 
which will convict a man or woman for murdering 
any other man or woman who spoils or seeks to 
spoil the sanctity of a home. There is no passion 
in the make-up of the American man so furious 
and unquenchable as that which stirs his breast 
when the chastity or the honor of a respectable 
woman is subjected to intrigue or even suspicion. 

In further reply to the question of Paul Bour- 
get, it would be less than frank to say that the one 
thing, holding back that feeling of sympathy and 
good-fellowship with the French people which the 
common political ideals of the two countries tend 
to promote, is the Frenchman's apparent lack of 
respect for women, and his insistence that the 
American man's behavior towards women is hy- 
pocrisy. 

Coming back to the position of married women, 
Emily Faithfull says that **the rich American 
woman has undoubtedly a good time, and I am pre- 
pared to maintain that, on the whole, America is 
a paradise for married women."* 

'The wife's opportunities," remarks Bryce, 
''are circumscribed, except among the richest peo- 

* p. 343. 



108 Democracy In America 

pie, by the duties of the household management, 
owing to the great difficulty of obtaining domestic 
help. But she holds in her own house a more prom- 
inent, if not a more substantially powerful position 
than in England or even in France. With the Ger- 
man Hausfrau, who is too often content to be a 
mere housewife, there is of course no comparison. 
The best proof of the superior place American 
ladies occupy is to be found in the notions they 
profess to entertain of the relations of an English 
married pair. They talk of an English wife as little 
better than a slave, declaring that when they stay 
with English friends, or receive an English couple 
in America, they see the wife always deferring to 
the husband and the husband always assuming that 
his pleasure and convenience are to prevail. The 
European wife, they admit, often gets her own way, 
but she gets it by tactful arts, by flattery or wheed- 
ling or playing on the man's weaknesses; whereas 
in America the husband's duty and desire is to 
gratify the wife and render her those services which 
the English tyrant expects from his consort. One 
may often hear an American miatron commiserate 
a friend who has married in Europe, while the 
daughters declare in chorus that they will never 
follow the example. Laughable as all this may 
seem to Englishwomen, it is perfectly true that the 
theory as well as the practice of conjugal life is 
not the same in America as in England. There are 
overbearing husbands in America, but they are more 
condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood 
than in England. There are exacting wives in Eng- 



Domestic Life 109 

land, but their husbands are more pitied than would 
be the case in America. In neither country can 
one say that the principle of perfect equality 
reigns, for in America the balance inclines as much 
in favor of the wife as it does in England in favor 
of the husband. No one man can have a sufficient- 
ly large acquaintance in both countries to entitle 
his individual opinion on the results to much weight. 
Those observers who, having lived in both countries, 
favor the American practice, do so because the 
theory it is based on departs less from pure equal- 
ity than does that of England. Such observers do 
not mean that the recognition of women as equals 
or superiors makes them any better or sweeter or 
wiser than Englishwomen ; but rather that the prin- 
ciple of equality, by correcting the characteristic 
faults of men, and especially their selfishness and 
vanity, is more conducive to the concord and hap- 
piness of the home. This may be true, but I have 
heard others declare that there is, at least among 
the richer class, a growing detachment of the wife 
from the husband's life and interests, so that she 
is more disposed to absent herself for long periods 
from him ; and some observers maintain that the 
American system, since it does not require the wife 
habitually to forego her own wishes, tends, if not 
to make her self-indulgent and capricious, yet 
slightly to impair the more delicate charms of 
character; as it is written, 'It is more blessed to 
give than to receive.* 

*'It need hardly be said that in all cases where 
the two sexes come into competition for comfort, 



110 Democracy In America 

the provision is made first for women. Before 
drawing room cars had become common, the end 
car in railway trains being that farthest removed 
from the smoke of the locomotive, was often re- 
served for them (though men accompanying a lady 
could enter it), and at hotels their sitting room is 
the best and sometimes the only available public 
room, ladyless guests being driven to the bar or 
the hall. It is sometimes said that the privileges 
yielded to American women have disposed them 
to claim as a right what was only a courtesy, and 
have told unfavorably upon their manners. In- 
stances, such as that of women entering public ve- 
hicles already overcrowded, are cited in favor of 
this view, but I cannot on the whole think it well 
founded. The better bred women do not presume 
on their sex; and the area of good breeding is al- 
ways widening. It need hardly be said that the 
community at large gains by the softening and re- 
straining influence which the reverence for woman- 
hood diffuses. Nothing so quickly incenses the 
people as any insult offered to a woman. Wife- 
beating, and indeed any kind of rough violence 
offered to a woman, is far less common among the 
rudest class than it is in England. Field work or 
work at the pit-mouth of mines is seldom or never 
done by women in America ; and the American 
traveler, who in some parts of Europe finds women 
performing severe manual labor, is revolted by the 
sight in a way which Europeans find surprising."* 

* II, 806. 



Domestic Life 111 

De Tocqueville thought that the married wo- 
men in America generally displayed an admirable 
fortitude. "In no country in the world," he says, 
**are private fortunes more precarious than in the 
United States. It is not uncommon for the same 
man, in the course of his life, to rise and sink again 
through all the grades which lead from opulence 
to poverty. American women support these vicis- 
situdes with calm and unquenchable energy; it 
would seem that their desires contract, as easily 
as they expand, with their fortunes. 

''The greater part of the adventurers who mi- 
grate every year to people the western wilds be- 
long, as I observed in the former part of this work, 
to the old Anglo-American race of the Northern 
states. Many of these men, who rush so boldly 
onwards in pursuit of wealth, were already in the 
enjoyment of a competency in their own part of 
the country. They take their wives along with 
them, and make them share the countless perils and 
privations which always attend the commencement 
of these expeditions. I have often met, even on the 
verge of the wilderness, with young women, who 
after having been brought up amidst all the com- 
forts of the large towns of New England, had 
passed, almost without any intermediate stage, 
from the wealthy abode of their parents to a com- 
fortless hovel in a forest. Fever, solitudes, and a 
tedious life had not broken the springs of their 
courage. Their features were impaired and faded, 
but their looks were firm; they appeared to be at 
once sad and resolute. I do not doubt that these 



112 Democracy In America 

young American women had amassed, in the edu- 
cation of their early years, that inward strength 
which they displayed under these circumstances."* 

As to the American women of the present day 
Munsterberg thinks that their self-assertion disin- 
clines them to domestic work, and militates against 
their efficiency as home-makers. He says, **The 
American girl is, moreover, not fond of domestic 
cares. It w^ould not be fair to say that she is a 
bad housekeeper, for the number of wives who 
have to get along without servants is much greater 
than in Germany. And even in spite of the various 
economic advantages which she enjoys, it is unde- 
niable that the American woman takes her home 
duties seriously — looks after every detail, and keeps 
the whole matter w^ell in hand. But nevertheless, 
she feels very differently tow^ard her capacities 
along this line. The German woman feels that her 
household is a source of joy; the American woman 
that it is a necessary evil. The American woman 
loves to adorn her home and tries to express in it 
her own personality, not less than her German 
sister; but everything beyond this — the mere tec- 
nique of housekeeping, cleaning, purchasing, re- 
pairing, and hiring servants — she feels to be, after 
all, somewhat degrading. The young woman who 
has been to college attacks her household duties 
seriously and conscientiously, but with the feeling 
that she would rather sacrifice herself by nursing 
the suffering patients in a hospital. The perfect 

* II, 213. 



Domestic Life 113 

economic appliances for American housekeeping? 
save a great deal of labor which the German wife 
has to perform, and perhaps just on that account 
the American woman feels that the rest of it is 
vexatious work which women have to do until some 
new machines can be devised to take their places. 
This disinclination to household drudgery pervades 
the whole nation, and it is only the older genera- 
tions in country districts that take a pride in their 
immaculate housekeeping, while the younger gen- 
erations even there have the tendency to shirk 
household work. The daughters of farmers would 
rather work in a factory, because it is so much 
more stimulating and lively, than ironing or wash- 
ing dishes or tending baby brother and sister at 
home; for the same reason, they will not become 
domestic servants for any one else. An(\ so, for 
the upper and lower classes, the dismclination to 
house-work stands very much in th'3 way of mar- 
riage. 

'This disinclination affects marriage in still 
another way. Families are tending more and more 
to give up separate houses and live in family ho- 
tels, or, if more modestly circumstanced, in board- 
ing houses. The expense of servants has something 
to do with this, but the more important factor is 
the saving of work for the wife. The necessary 
consequence is the dissolution of intimate family 
life. When a dozen families eat year in and year 
out in the same dining room, the close relations 
which should prevail in the family take on a very 
different shading. And thus it is that the intel- 



114 Democracy In America 

lectual self-assertion of women works in the most 
divers ways, against the formation of marriages 
and against family life."* 

The Americans should feel some anxiety, so 
Munsterberg thinks, over the decline in the birth- 
rate among the class of people from which arises 
our most cultivated type of women. *ln Massa- 
chusetts," he says, "we may distinguish three 
classes of population; those white persons whose 
parents were born in the country, and those whose 
parents were foreigners, and the blacks. This negro 
population of Massachusetts has the same birth and 
death rate as the negro elsewhere; for every thou- 
sand persons there are 17.4 more births than deaths. 
For the second class — that is, the families of foreign 
parentage — there are actually 45.6 more births than 
deaths, while in the white families of native parent- 
age there are only 3.8. In some other North Atlantic 
States, the condition is still worse ; in New Hamp- 
shire, for instance, the excess of births in families of 
foreign parentage is 58.5, while in those of native 
parentage the situation is actually reversed, and 
there are 10.4 more deaths than births. So it hap- 
pens for all the New England States, the native white 
population, in the narrower sense, has a death pre- 
ponderance of 1.5 for every thousand inhabitants, so 
that, in the intellectually superior part of the coun- 
try, the strictly native population is not maintaining 
itself. 

'Interesting statistics recently gathered at Har- 
vard University show that its graduates are also not 

*p. 581. 



Domestic Life 115 

holding their own. Out of 881 students who were 
graduated more than twenty-five years ago, 634 are 
married, and they have 1,262 children. On the prob- 
able assumption that they will have no more children, 
and that these are half males, we find that 881 stu- 
dent graduates in 1877 leave in 1902 only 631 sons. 
The climatic conditions cannot be blamed for this, 
since the surplus of births in families of foreign par- 
ents is not only very great, but is far greater than in 
any of the European countries from which these im- 
migrant parents came. Of European countries, Hun- 
gary has the greatest excess of births — namely 40.5 
as compared with 13.7 in Germany. That population 
of America which comes from German, Irish, Swe- 
dish, French and Italian parentage has, even in New" 
England, a birth surplus of 44.5. The general condi-: 
tions of the country seem, therefore, favorable to fe- 
cundity, and this casts a greater suspicion on social 
conditions and ideals. And the circumstance must 
not be overlooked, that the increased pressure of 
women into wage-earning occupations lessens the 
opportunities of the men, and so contributes indirect- 
ly to prevent the man from starting his home in early 
life. In short, from whatever side we look at it, the 
self-assertion of woman exalts her at the expense of 
the family — perfects the individual, but injures so- 
ciety; makes the American woman perhaps the finest 
flower of all civilization, but awakens at the same 
time serious fears for the propagation of the Ameri- 
can race.*'* 

*p. 583 



CHAPTER VI. 
DOMESTIC LIFE— (Coniinued). 

1>ECLINE OF PARENTAL AUTHORITY— HAPPY RELATIONS 
BETWEEN MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY— EXCESSIVE 
FREEDOM OF CHILDREN— CONTRAST BETWEEN THE 
FAMILY LIFE OF THE RI CH AND THE POOR— THE DI- 
VORCE PROBLEM— AMERICANS PERHAPS LEAD IN 
THE NUMBER OF FELI CITOUS MARRIAGES — THE 
VIRTUES OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN AMERICA DUE TO 
FORTUNATE INHERITANCE AND FAVORABLE EN- 
VIRONMENT RATHER THAN TO PREVISION. 

Foreigners, in commenting upon the domestic 
life of the Americans, seem to notice, above all, the 
absence of parental authority, and the great freedom 
which characterizes each member of the family. 

Says De Tocqueville: **In aristocracies, then, 
the father is not only the civil head of the family, but 
the oracle of its traditions, the expounder of its cus- 
toms, the arbiter of its manners. He is listened to 
with deference, he is addressed with respect, and the 
love which is felt for him is always tempered with 
fear. When the condition of society becomes demo- 
cratic, and men adopt as their general principle that 
it is good and lawful to judge of all things for one's 
self, using former points of belief not as a rule of 
faith but simply as a means of information, the power 
which the opinions of a father exercise over those of 
his sons diminishes as well as his legal power. 

inn I 



Domestic Life 117 

"Perhaps the subdivision of estates which de- 
mocracy brings with it contributes more than any- 
thing else to change the relations existing between 
a father and his children. When the property of the 
father of a family is scanty, his son and himself con- 
stantly live in the same place, and share the same oc- 
cupations: habit and necessity bring them together, 
and force them to hold constant communication : the 
inevitable consequence is a sort of familiar intimacy, 
which renders authority less absolute, and which can 
ill be reconciled with the external forms of respect. 
Now in democratic countries the class of those who 
are possessed of small fortunes is precisely that 
which gives strength to the notions, and a particular 
direction to the manners, of the community. That 
class makes its opinions preponderate as universally 
as its will, and even those who are most inclined to 
resist its commands are carried away in the end by its 
example. I have known eager opponents of democ- 
racy who allowed their children to address them with 
perfect colloquial equality. 

''Thus, at the same time that the power of aris- 
tocracy is declining, the austere, the conventional, 
and the legal part of parental authoritj^ vanishes, and 
a species of equality prevails around the domestic 
hearth. I know not, upon the whole, whether society 
loses by the change, but I am inclined to believe that 
a man individually is a gainer by it. I think that, in 
proportion as manners and laws become more demo- 
cratic, the relation of father and son becomes more 
intimate and more affectionate ; rules and authority 
are less talked of; confidence and tenderness are 



118 Democracy In America 

oftentimes increased, and it would seem that the 
natural bond is drawn closer in proportion as the 
social bond is loosened. In a democratic family the 
father exercises no other power than that with which 
men love to invest the affection and experience of 
age ; his orders would perhaps be disobeyed, but his 
advice is for the most part authoritative. Though he 
be not hedged in with ceremonial respect, his sons at 
least accost him with confidence; no settled form of 
speech is appropriated to the mode of addressing him, 
but they speak to him constantly, and are ready to 
consult him day by day; the master and the consti- 
tuted ruler have vanished — the father remains. 
Nothing more is needed, in order to judge of the dif- 
ference between the two states of society in this re- 
spect, than to peruse the family correspondence of 
aristocratic ages. The style is always correct, cere- 
monious, stiff, and so cold that the natural warmth 
of the heart can hardly be felt in the language. The 
language, on the contrary, addressed by a son to his 
father in democratic countries is always marked by 
mingled freedom, familiarity and affection, which at 
once show that new relations have sprung up in the 
bosom of the family. 

"A similar revolution takes place in the mutual 
relations of children. In aristocratic families, as well 
as in aristocratic society, every place is marked out 
beforehand. Npt only does the father occupy a sep- 
arate rank, in which he enjoys extensive privileges, 
but even the children are not equal amongst them- 
selves. The age and sex of each irrevocably deter- 
mine his rank, and secure to him certain privileges: 



Domestic Life 119 

most of these distinctions are aTt>olished or diminished 
by democracy. In aristocratic families the eldest son, 
inheriting the greater part of the property, and al- 
most all the rights of the family, becomes the chief, 
and, to a certain extent, the master, of his brothers. 
Greatness and power are for him — for them, medioc- 
rity and dependence. Nevertheless it would be 
wrong to suppose that, amongst aristocratic nations, 
the privileges of the eldest son are advantageous to 
himself alone, or that they excite nothing but envy 
and hatred in those around him. The eldest son com- 
monly endeavors to procure wealth and power for his 
brothers, because the general splendor of the house 
is reflected back on him who represents it; the 
younger sons seek to back their brother in all his un- 
dertakings, because the greatness and power of the 
head of the family better enable him to provide for 
all its branches. The different members of an aristo- 
cratic family are therefore very closely bound to- 
gether; their interests are connected, their minds 
agree, but their hearts are seldom in harmony. 

''Democracy also binds brothers to each other, 
but by very different means. Under democratic laws 
all the children are perfectly equal, and consequently 
independent; nothing brings them forcibly together, 
but nothing keeps them apart; and as they have the 
same origin, as they are trained under the same roof, 
as they are treated with the same care, and as no 
peculiar privilege distinguishes or divides them, the 
affectionate and youthful intimacy of early years 
easily springs up between them. Scarcely any oppor- 
tunities occur to break the tie thus formed at the out- 



120 Democracy In America 

set of life ; for their brotherhood brings them daily to- 
gether, without embarrassing them. It is not, then, 
by interest, but by common associations and by the 
free sympathy of opinion and of taste, that democ- 
racy unites brothers to each other. It divides their 
inheritance, but it allows their hearts and minds to 
mingle together. Such is the charm of these demo- 
cratic manners, that even the partisans of aristocracy 
are caught by it ; and after having experienced it for 
some time, they are by no means tempted to revert 
to the respectful and frigid observances of aristo- 
cratic families."* 

Herbert Spencer takes the view that the free- 
dom of children, as of adults in the family, varies 
with the degree of political tyranny. He quotes de 
Segur, as saying of the French after the Revolution, 
that '^Among our forefathers a man of thirty was 
more in subjection to the head of the family than a 
child of eighteen is now.'' He quotes Wright, as say- 
ing of the English of the fifteenth century, that 
''Young ladies, even of great families, were brought 
up not only strictly, but even tyrannically. * * * 
The parental authority was indeed carried to an al- 
most extravagant extent." "Down to the seventeenth 
century," says Spencer, "children stood or knelt in 
trembling silence in the presence of their fathers and 
mothers, and might not sit down without permission. 
The literature of even the last century, alike by the 
deferential use of 'sir' and 'madam' in addressing 
parents, by the authority parents assumed in arrang- 
ing marriages for their children, and by the extent to 

* II. 207. 



Domestic Life 121 

which sons and still more daughters, recognized the 
duty of accepting the spouses chosen, shows us a per- 
sistence of filial subordination proportionate to the 
political subordination. And then, since the begin- 
ning of this century, along with the immense develop- 
ment of industrialism and the correlative progress 
towards a freer type of social organization, there has 
gone a marked increase of juvenile freedom, as 
shown by a greatly moderated parental dictation, by 
a mitigation of punishments, and by that decreased 
formality of domestic intercourse which has accom- 
panied the changing of fathers from masters into 
friends. * * * * jj^ Germany, again, there is 
a stringency of rule in education allied to the political 
stringency of rule. As writes a German lady long 
resident in England, and experienced as a teacher — 
'English children are not tyrannized over — ^they are 
guided by their parents. The spirit of independence 
and personal rights is fostered. I can therefore un- 
derstand the teacher who said he would rather teach 
twenty German children than one English child — I 
understand him, but I do not sympathize with him. 
The German child is nearly a slave compared to the 
English child, it is therefore more easily subdued by 
the one in authority.' 

''Lastly come the facts that in the United States, 
long characterized by great development of the in- 
dustrial organization, little qualified by the militant, 
parental government has become extremely lax, and 
girls and boys are nearly on a par in their positions ; 
the independence reached being such that young 
ladies often form their own circles of acquaintance 



122 Democracy In America 

and carry on their intimacies without let or hindrance 
from their fathers and mothers."* 

''While an average increase of juvenile freedom 
is to be anticipated," Spencer goes on to say, ''there 
is reason to think that here and there it has already 
gone too far. I refer to the United States. Besides 
in some cases unduly subordinating the lives of adults, 
the degree of independence there allowed to the 
young, appears to have the effect of bringing them 
forward prematurely, initiating them too early in the 
excitements proper to maturity, and so tending to ex- 
haust the interests of life before it is half spent. Such 
regulation of childhood as conduces to full utilization 
of childish activities and pleasures before the activi- 
ties and pleasures of manhood and womanhood are 
entered upon, is better for offspring at the same time 
that it is better for parents."! 

Burne-Jones refers to an American child he met 
in a New York family as follows: "Fritz! How^ can 
I hope to describe him? With the outward semblance 
of an angel, for he was a most beautiful child, he 
combined, on occasion, the inward attributes of a 
diminutive demon. Obedience or respect for elders 
were ideas with which he had no concern. His par- 
ents exercised small control over him — he was en- 
tirely a law unto his small and irresponsible self. In 
a rash moment, struck by the loveliness of the little 
fellow, I asked permission to paint his portrait, and 
there began a series of sittings — by courtesy so 
called — the restless and exhausting turbulence of 
wh'*ch I shall nevsr forget. At these times all the 

* Principles of Sociology, 1, 778. f Ibid. 1, 794. 



Domestic Life 123 

strenuous and hectic activity of young America 
seemed concentrated in that small form. He never 
sat still an instant. One morning he realized that I 
was particularly anxious to observe his face as I 
worked. That was sufficient. From that moment he 
systematically presented his little back, and it was 
only by pretending that I did not want to see his face 
at all, and preferred his back, that, out of sheer per- 
versity, he vouchsafed me a glance at his seraphic 
countenance. The only human being of whom he 
stood the least in awe was an old dragon of a Ger- 
man nurse, Monica, who, by alternately coaxing him 
with Grimm's fairy tales and threatening him with 
untold penalties, induced a reluctant and intermit- 
tent obedience, by which I was eventually enabled to 
produce a picture — I won't say a portrait — which his 
parents were good enough to accept as a record of 
their offspring. 

'1 remember that Monica's system of discipline 
included daily doses of castor-oil, administered in no 
niggardly spirit, and many a bitter wail and distor- 
tion of angelic features announced the sufferings of 
poor Fritz under this inhuman treatment. But no 
amount of physical discomfort or mental terrorism 
ever succeeded in taming his proud spirit. 

''Til kick your head!' was an awful threat, 
picked up no one knew where, demonstrating the 
aggressive independence of this pmall republican. 
I have heard him so address his grandmother. 

'' 'Fritz, for shame! Say excuse me, grandma.' 
(This from his father.) Dead silence on the part of 
Fritz. 



124 Democracy In America 

''Then more severely: 'Fritz, stand at atten- 
tion!' Now says 'Excuse me, grandma.' Drawing his 
small feet together, with flushed and sullen cheeks 
and downcast eyes, the beautiful little creature would 
then utter a few perfunctory and scarcely audible 
sounds, which were generously construed by the fam- 
ily as expressive of contrition and penitence ; and 
Fritz started again with a clear record, for a brief 
period. His mother had absolutely no influence 
over him whatever, and she admitted as much. At 
meal times Fritz was in his glory. Habitually setting 
at naught all accepted canons of behaviour for child- 
ren, he would loudly demand to be served first, and 
clamour for the choicest dishes. 'I want some more 
pudding' — 'If what ? ' — 'If there is any.' If Fritz was 
not the hero of this anecdote of an American infant, 
he well might have been. But do not let me give the 
impression that insubordination and naughtiness 
were his chief characteristic. He could, if he chose, 
become as sweet and good as any little boy need be 
— until yells from the nursery would proclaim that 
he had once more transgressed, and that Monica was 
probably administering an additional dose of castor- 
oil. Dear, turbulent little spirit and body, I wonder 
whether I shall ever set eyes on you again, and if I 
do, what you will have grown into."* 

De Constant was astonished at the freedom of 
the children he observed in Washington City. "The 
street," he says, "just as if it were a path through 
the woods, belongs to the children, — it is the same 

•p. 34. 



Domestic Life 125 

throughout America, — the squirrels and the birds. 
All these youngsters disport themselves freely in it — 
how they manage it I do not know — without damag- 
ing the flower beds. Stretching away into the dis- 
tance there is a succession of boys and girls, all bare- 
iTeaded and without any grown-ups to look after 
them, hurrying along with vigorous strokes of their 
slender legs on their roller skates. They carry 
their copybooks under their arms, and swerve and 
and dart capriciously like so many swallows. The 
asphalt has been watered with an antiseptic solu- 
tion and looks as if it had been laid on purpose for 
them. Carriages and automobiles keep clear of 
them, or perhaps it would be more exact to say that 
they dare everything and are training themselves to 
run risks. There are a great many maimed people 
in the United States, but, after all, they are in the 
minority, and the sport consists of keeping in the 
majority, which has developed its arms, legs, lungs 
and levelheadedness."* 

Paul de Rousiers observed that "the Ameri- 
cans accustom their children to look after themselves 
from an early age, to have confidence in themselves 
and to need nobody. When traveling one can see 
little girls of seven or eight, packing their trunks 
themselves; each has her own and is responsible 
for it; she orders what she wants at meal time and 
knows how to choose. A well-bred child in our 

* p. 283. 



126 Democracy In America 

country looks at her mother to see if she may ac- 
cept a bit of candy."* 

**In Europe," says de Lingereux, *'we say of a 
spoiled child, of a forward young woman: *They 
were brought up in America/ " 

*'0f course American children are boorish or 
polite according to the social stratum to which they 
belong. But we notice that, possibly because of the 
vigor which comes from the free exercise of their own 
initiative, they have less of childish dependence and 
show earlier development of the sense of responsi- 
bility. Aside from these exterior differences, we 
find the same faults, the same virtues and the same 
enticing charm of youth; the difference is that in 
America the development of the personal life is not 
retarded. This is the special phase of the question 
which we propose to study, in an effort to grasp the 
procedure by which American educators secure this 
desirable result. 

**That the American boy or girl is different from 
his little European cousin, the docile child who grows 
up in leading-strings, timid, hesitating, who never 
speaks or acts except at command, who eats his soup 
to escape a whipping, is certain ; that the totally dif- 
ferent training of American youth produces mon- 
sters on the other side of the water, is false."t 

According to the view of Muirhead, the freedom 
of American children does not imply that their wel- 
fare is neglected. "As much fuss is made over each 

•p. 250. t p. 155. 



Domestic Life 127 

young republican," he says, "as if he were the heir 
to a long line of kings ; his swaddling clothes might 
make a ducal infant jealous; the family physician 
thinks $100 or $150 a moderate fee for ushering him 
into the light of day. Ordinary milk is not good 
enough for him; sterilized milk will hardly do; 
'modified milk' is alone considered fit for this demo- 
cratic suckling. Even the father is expected to 
spend much time in patient consultation over his 
food, his dress, his teething-rings, and his outgoing. 
He is weighed daily, and his nourishment is changed 
at once if he is a fraction either behind or ahead of 
what is deemed a normal rate of growth. American 
writers on the care of children give directions for 
the use of the most complex and time devouring de- 
vices for the proper preparation of their food, and 
seem really to expect that mamma and nurse v/ill go 
through with the prescribed juggling with pots and 
pans, cylinders and lamps."* 

Social circles and especially club circles among 
the women of America are not narrowly based upon 
the economic status of their members. It is more 
often the case than otherwise that the women of any 
circle comprise members of very opposite financial 
standing.! Also, in the midst of great diversities 
of social customs and standards, there is an ideal- 
ism common to the American woman of all sections 
of the country. 

'That keen sense of personal responsibility for 
the general good," says Mrs. McCracken, ''which is 
almost invariably to be found in women of the pres- 



* p. 64. t Mrs. McCracken, ch. 14. 



128 Democracy In America 

ent day in America, not only in cities, but also, to an 
increasing extent, in small towns and villages, is, in 
itself, one of the most salient marks of distinction 
between the Woman of today and the woman of yes- 
terday. And great though its effect has been upon 
the civic ideals of the American people, larger still 
has been its influence upon their social ideals. The 
necessity for social organization in the interests of 
that civic duty which American women of today feel 
that they must perform has united, and, in continual- 
ly increasing measure, is uniting, those women, as on- 
ly concerted effort toward an altruistic end can unite 
women. It is teaching them to see more and more 
clearly that between the citizens of a country even 
the widest differences are narrow. It is making 
them know that, however they may vary superfi- 
cially, fundamentally they are alike ; because, what- 
ever else they may be or may not be, they still are 
all Americans.*** 

Perhaps it would add something to the compre- 
hensiveness of domestic life in America if some light 
were thrown upon those families which deviate from 
the average, for instance, those of the very rich and 
the very poor. 

Of the very rich, Burne-Jones says, "The chief 
fault to be found with these people — the very rich 
ones, I mean, who owe their conspicuous position 
solely to their wealth and to no other cause what- 
ever — is their extreme frivolity. There seems to be 
no serious basis of life for them at all, and amuse- 
ment and pleasure are the sole aims of their exist- 
ence. Of course, this is more or less the case in any 

* p. 396. 



Domestic Life 129 

society where great wealth and much leisure abound, 
but I think it is even more noticeable in this little 
New York coterie than among our own leisured 
classes where at least they have politics to fall back 
upon. 

'•Unless they are individually gifted in some 
way, which is not always the case, these people (I 
am speaking chiefly of the women now) seem to 
have no resources whatever, for politics, as they do 
in England, form no part of the social programme. 

"The halo of importance which surrounds the 
heads of our own politicians in England has no coun- 
terpart in America, where few politicians are in 
'society' at all, and the few that are owe their status 
to some accident unconnected with their calling. No 
one dreams of talking politics at a 'smart' New York 
dinner-party, and while this is, in a sense, a relief 
from the altogether disproportionate amount of at- 
tention accorded to the subject in England upon these 
and all other occasions, yet the almost entire absence 
of any serious thought (art and literature being 
equally foreign to the genius of a 'society' in which 
bridge claims most of the hours not devoted to the 
toilet) has a tendency to render conversation trivial 
and elementary to a degree. 

"The manners of these people in public still 
leave something to be desired. At the opera, for 
instance, there is a pretty continuous flow of conver- 
sation in the parterre boxes during the entire per- 
formance ; and this goes on steadily, irrespective of 
the music or the artists on the stage. Indeed, the 
opera in New York has become, for this particular 



130 Democracy In America 

set, little else than a social occasion, for the meeting 
of friends and talking; and one of them admitted to 
me that she was always anxious for the opera to 
come to an end, that she might get away to supper 
at Sherry's."* 

Mrs. Tweedie thinks that the luncheons of 
American society women are too magnificent. "A 
repast," she says, "consisting of melon or grape fruit, 
soup, fish, and a bird, with endless vegetables; an 
elaborate salad, handed alone ; ice-cream with angel 
cakes; and then candies galore, followed by coffee 
— takes a couple of hours to serve for twenty or 
thirty women. There are more odds and ends like 
olives and celery, a separate sandwich or hot bread 
for each course; crackers (biscuits), compotes, and 
jellies, each and all solemnly and separately handed 
in turn. Often there is music in the background, 
such as four girls at violin, piano, 'cello, and guitar; 
or a man playing a zither. It is all most costly and 
elaborate; very charming, very sociable, with beau- 
tiful flowers and perfect linen ; embroidered cloths 
and lace mats; exquisite china; but it does seem a 
long time to spend in the middle of the day, although 
the dresses, like the ice-creams, are wonderful. * * 

''Americans live in the dark; English people 
live in the light. * * They certainly have pretty 
subdued lights in America. Many of the lampshades 
are exquisite, especially the artistic glass ones; a 
form of decoration which originated in that land and 
has, alas! not been sufficiently copied in Europe. 
Some of those Tiffany glass shades are adorable, and 

* p. 119. 



Domestic Life 131 

the effect of a beautiful cathedral window light in 
the room is thought inspiring. But these lights are 
sometimes so shaded that it is well-nigh impossible 
to recognize friends."* 

It would be extremely interesting if some for- 
eign-born writer, after an intimate acquaintance with 
the home life of the very poor people, could give us 
a glimpse of that side of our civilization. Well, for- 
tunately we have such a writer to quote from. He 
hailed from Denmark, and spent many years moving 
in and out among the families of the poor. I refer, 
of course, to Jacob Riis. **Here let me show you a 
tenement house block," he says, **on the East-side 
today typical of a hundred such and more. There 
were two thousand seven hundred and eighty-one 
persons living in it when a census was made of it two 
years ago, four hundred and sixty-six of them babies 
in arms. There were four hundred and forty-one 
dark rooms with no windows at all, and six hundred 
and thirty-five rooms that opened upon the air-shaft. 
An army of mendicants was marching forth from 
that block ; in five years six hundred and sixty differ- 
ent families in it had applied for relief. In that 
time it had harbored thirty-two cases of tuberculosis, 
and probably at least three times as many more in 
all stages that were not reported. The year before, 
the Health Department had recorded thirteen cases 
of diphtheria there. However, the rent roll was all 
right, it amounted to $113,964 a year. 

'*I tell you these things that you may understand 
the setting of the homes in the greatest of American 

* p. 126. 



J 82 Democracy In America 

cities. Two millions of people in New York live in 
such tenements. Do you see those narrow slits in 
the roof? They are the air-shafts, two feet four 
inches wide, sixty or seventy feet deep, through which 
light and air are supposed, in the landlord's theory, 
to come down to the tenants. * * * 

"Look, now, upon this flat in an East-side block 
and tell me if you think that that is a proper setting 
for American citizenship. This is one of the pigger- 
ies I have spoken of, and there are too many of them. 
Thirteen persons slept in that room where the law 
allowed only three. In that neighborhood I counted 
thirty-three families in a tenement where the original 
builder had made room for seventeen. Do you think 
that is safe? And what must be the effect upon the 
growing generation of such an environment? * * * 
How strong do you think the home feeling can be in 
a place where the family tea-kettle does weekly duty 
on Mondays as a wash-boiler? Think of the attrac- 
tion such a place must have for father and the boys 
when they come home from work in the evening."* 

Passing to another phase of domestic life, it is 
a notorious fact that the Americans lead the world 
in number of divorces. Is this due to moral progress 
or moral decadence? Sir Lepel Griffin remarks, 
that **SL too facile divorce law differs from polygamy 
in little but name, and some American writer has 
said that the man who has three or four wives di- 
vorced, one after another, only drives his team tan- 

* The Peril and Preservation of the Hmtie, 110, 127, 131. 



Domestic Life 133 

dem, while the Mormon elder has it four-in-hand/** 
In regard to this matter, Miinsterberg 
says, ^'Anybody familiar with the country knows 
that, much more often than in Europe, the real 
grounds which lead to divorce — not the mere legal 
pretexts given — are highly ethical ones. We have 
hinted at this When we have analyzed the religious 
life; the main reason is the ethical objection to con- 
tinuing externally in a marriage which has ceased to 
be spiritually congenial. It is the women especially, 
and generally the very best women, who prefer to 
take the step, with all the hardships which it involves, 
to prolonging a marriage which is spiritually hypo- 
critical and immoral. Infidelity of the woman is the 
ground of divorce in only a vanishingly small number 
of cases, and the sexual purity of marriage is on a 
high plane throughout the people. The pure at- 
mosphere of this somewhat unemotional people, 
which makes it possible for anj^ woman to wend her 
way without escort through the streets of a large city 
in the evening and to travel alone across the Conti- 
nent, and which protects the girl on the street from 
being stared at or rudely accosted, protects even 
more the married woman. "t 

In spite of the great number of divorces, it is 
probably a fact that we have in America an unusual 
proportion of couples living a felicitous and ideal 
married life. In regard to family disorganization, 
our countrymen, Charles H. Cooley, remarks that, 
**The evil involved is largely an old evil in a new 
form; it is- not so much that new troubles have arisen 

• p. 63. t P. 5"5. 



134 Democracy In America 

between husband and wife as that a new remedy is 
sought for old ones. They quarreled and marriage 
vows were broken quite as much in former times as 
now, as much in England today as in America: the 
main difference is in the outcome. 

"Moreover, the matter has its bright side; for 
divorce, though full of evils, is associated with a 
beneficent rise in the standing of women, of which 
it is to a certain degree the cause. The fact that 
law and opinion permit women to revolt against the 
abuse of marital power operates widely and subtly 
to increase their self-respect and the respect of oth- 
ers for them, and like the right of working men to 
strike, does most of its good without overt exer- 
cise."* 

Domestic efficiency necessarily implies such 
marital relations as will yield to society a sufficiency 
of offspring, physically, mentally, and morally fitted 
to ensure progress. Our American family life is yet 
far from having reached this ideal. In a large and 
increasing number of families the birth-rate is too 
low to maintain the population. In thousands of our 
families the infant death-rate is extremely high, in- 
dicating conditions unfavorable to physical effi- 
ciency. Our high percentage of illiteracy, and the 
fact that less than two per cent of our people re- 
ceive an education above the common school, do not 
indicate conditions favoring a high degree of mental 
efficiency. And finally, our high percentage of 
crime, juvenile and adult, speaks loudly against our 
moral efficiency. 

*p. 371. 



Domestic Life 135 

To sum it up, we enjoy, thanks to our exception- 
al inheritance and favorable natural conditions, a 
number of advantages and opportunities not found 
in the old countries, monarchical or aristocratic, and 
these have borne fruit especially in the development 
of a large number of exalted and beautiful types of 
womanhood, in cultivating among women a self-con- 
trol and purity which have enabled them to exercise 
an extraordinary degree of freedom. The isolation 
of domestic life, during a long period in the history 
of America, has given rise, as similar conditions in 
the Middle Ages, to that lofty respect for woman- 
hood which we are pleased to call chivalry. But, 
while rejoicing in this fruitage of our fortunate in- 
heritance and environment, we are hardly justified in 
boasting of its superiority to the rest of the world, 
when we consider how little of it has been due to our 
deliberate choice and prevision. Instead of boast- 
ing of our present status, we should be asking our- 
selves, whether we have formulated any principles 
or ideals by which the fruitage of our past may be 
preserved; or are we merely drifting, like rubbish, 
upon the tide, and losing by degrees, as our civiliza- 
tion becomes more settled and conventional, all of 
those queenly and princely virtues which have been 
the admiration of the older countries. And, indeed, 
can we escape a feeling of deep humility in view of 
the multitude of American families who live under 
conditions which serve only to debase mankind, 
physically, mentally and morally? 



CHAPTER VII. 
POLITICAL LIFE. 

SPIRIT AND ESSENCE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY— EQUAL- 
ITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FAIR PLAY— THE UNITED 
STATES A CONFEDERACY OF LARGE AND SMALL 
STATES— MERITS AND DRAWBACKS TO THE FEDERAL 
SYSTI:M— LOCAL GOVERNTVIENT DEVEIvOPS INITIA- 
TIVE, PROMOTES EFFICIENCY, AND PATRIOTISM— IT 
IS ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT IN A DEMOCRACY— EX- 
TRAORDINARY POWER OF THE JUDICIARY. 

What is democracy in America? What princi- 
ple or ideal has rallied the people and given rise to 
the government which we call democracy? De 
Tocqueville defined democracy as the sovereignty 
of the people. "Whenever the political laws of the 
United States are to be discussed," he says, "it is 
with the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people 
that we must begin. The principle of the sover- 
eignty of the people, which is to be found, more or 
less, at the bottom of almost all human institutions, 
generally remains concealed from view. It is obeyed 
without being recognized, or if for a moment it be 
brought to light, it is hastily cast back into the gloom 
of the sanctuary. 'The will of the nation' is one of 
the expressions which have been most profusely 
abused by the wily and the despotic of every age. 
To the eyes of some it has been represented by the 
venal suffrages of a few of the satellites of power; to 

[1361 



Political Life 137 

others by the votes of a timid or an interested minor- 
ity; and some have even discovered it in the silence 
of a people, on the supposition that the fact of sub- 
mission established the right to command. 

**In America the principle of the sovereignty of 
the people is not either barren or concealed, as it is 
with some other nations ; it is recognized by the cus- 
toms and proclaimed by the laws; it spreads freely 
and arrives without impediment at its most remote 
consequences. If there be a country in the world 
where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people 
can be fairly appreciated, where it can be studied in 
its application to the affairs of society, and where its 
dangers and advantages may be foreseen, that coun- 
try is assuredly America. * * * 

'*At the present day the principle of the sover- 
eignty of the people has acquired, in the United 
States, all the practical development which the im- 
agination can conceive. It is unencumbered by those 
fictions which have been thrown over it in other coun- 
tries, and it appears in every possible form accord- 
ing to the exigency of the occasion. Sometimes the 
laws are made by the people in a body, as at Athens ; 
and sometimes representatives, chosen by universal 
suffrage, transact business in its name, and almost 
under its immediate control.''* 

The sovereignty of the people has been, un- 
doubtedly, one of the ideas underlying the democ- 
racy of the United States, but we have to admit that, 
in the early stages of our history, the people who 
governed were a small minority. Half of the adult 

* I, 55. 57. 



138 Democracy In America 

population — the women — had no voice in the gov- 
ernment; only men of property could vote, and sev- 
eral million Negroes were neither allowed to hold 
property nor to vote. Nevertheless, the enfranchis- 
ed and the unenfranchised, at least among the white 
population, felt a similar enthusiasm for our young 
republic. 

It is very evident, therefore, that something 
more fundamental than the sovereignty of the people 
must lie behind our democracy. Is it equality of 
possessions? De Tocqueville was inclined to this 
view. Although he defined democracy as the sover- 
eignty of the people, he refers to our democracy as 
being dominated by the idea of equality, — meaning 
the absence of a landed aristocracy and a relatively 
equal distribution of wealth. "America then," he 
says, "exhibits in her social state a most extraordin- 
ary phenomenon. Men are there seen on a greater 
equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other 
words, more equal in their strength, than in any 
other country of the world, or in any age of which 
history has preserved the remembrance."* 

At the time of De Tocqueville's observations 
nearly every voting citizen of America was a land- 
owner, and it seemed to him that equality of fortunes 
was the chief underlying fact of our democracy, and 
the cause of the political equality or sovereignty we 
enjoyed. 

But the theory that equality of fortunes has been 
the fundamental idea of our democracy does not 
seem to agree with the facts. While equality of for- 

* I, 5:;. 



Political Life 139 

tune existed to a remarkable extent in our early his- 
tory, as compared to European countries, our popula- 
tion was made up of a great mass of people who had 
no property. Likewise, at the present time, a 
large proportion of our population owns no property. 
And yet these propertyless people have been as ar- 
dent supporters of our democracy as the people of 
property. What is there about our government 
which wins the loyalty and enthusiasm, and stirs the 
pride of all classes of people? 

The only correct answer to this question has 
been given by our countryman, Henry Van Dyke, in 
his book "The Spirit of America." He discerns that 
the chief characteristic of our democracy is, not 
equality of possessions, but equality of opportunity 
and fair-play in a competitive struggle in which 
some win and some lose. He says, *lt is not, how- 
ever, of democracy as it has taken shape in political 
forms that I would speak, but rather of democracy 
as a spirit, a sentiment existing in the soul of the 
American people. The root of it is the feeling that 
the openings of life, so far as they are under human 
control, ought to be equal for all. The world may be 
like a house of many stories, some higher, some low- 
er. But there shall be no locked doors between 
those stories. Every stairway shall be unbarred. 
Every man shall have his chance to rise. Every man 
shall be free to pursue his happiness, and protected 
in the enjoyment of his liberty, and secure in the 
possession of his life, so far as he does not interfere 
with others in the same rights. * * * 



140 Democracy In America 

**You must not imagine that I propose to claim 
that this ideal has been perfectly realized in Ameri- 
ca. It is not true that every man gets justice there. 
It is not true that none are oppressed or unfairly 
treated. It is not true that every one finds the par- 
ticular stairway which he wishes to climb open 
and unencumbered. But where is any ideal perfect- 
ly realized except in heaven and in the writings of 
female novelists? It is of the real desire and pur- 
pose, the good intention, the aim and temper of the 
American people, that I speak. And here I say, 
without doubt, the spirit of fair play has been and 
still is, one of the creative and controlling factors of 
America."* Van Dyke points out further, 

that this characteristic is predominant in the provis- 
ions of our Constitution, and remains the predomi- 
nant note in all of our institutions. 

This ideal is more fundamental than that of the 
sovereignty of the people, since the mass of the 
early immigrants did not assume that they had a 
right to make laws or that freedom of opportunity 
involved such right. Their attitude towards the 
struggle for existence in America may be likened 
to that of boys towards a game of ball. They cared 
not who made the rules of the game so long as each 
player had a chance to score. If they had any 
thought about sovereignty of the people it was in 
the vague form of a consciousness that America 
was a place where public opinion favored fair play. 

In fact, the first public opinion which devel- 
oped in America was a general consensus that fair 

* p. sri. 



Political Life 141 

play and freedom of opportunity should prevail in 
this New World. The germ of American democracy 
is therefore found in this general consensus which 
began to express itself in the earliest colonial in- 
stitutions. 

If we define democracy as a government by 
the will of the people, or by the general consensus 
of opinion, it is necessary to point out how the 
American democracy differs from others in its defi- 
nition of public opinion, and in its provision for 
ascertaining what public opinion is. 

In the first place, American democracy does not 
assume that a mere majority of the people has the 
right to enforce its will upon the minority; but that 
the will of the people has a right to prevail only 
when it represents a general consensus, carrying an 
overwhelming sanction, such as people usually give 
to their traditions and mores. And this consensus 
must in every case be asce/rtained by public discus- 
sion and formally recorded decisions. When pub- 
lic opinion has thus expressed itself upon all essen- 
tial problems submitted to it, the minority agrees to 
abide by the majority in matters specified to be of 
subordinate importance ; and also agrees to seek 
the triumph of its will only by means of peaceful 
discussion and by the winning over to its cause of 
a sufficient number of adherents to constitute a new 
public opinion. For example, the general consensus 
of opinion in America is recorded in our national 
and state constitutions whose provisions have re- 
quired a two-thirds vote. Upon measures author- 
ized by the constitution of the nation or a state, 
laws may be passed by a majority vote; but any 



142 Democracy In America 

measure going beyond the scope of the constitution 
is declared void by the supreme court, because, 
notwithstanding it may represent the views of the 
majority, it has not been sanctioned by that pre- 
ponderating and formally expressed public will 
which is the cardinal principle of American de- 
mocracy. 

A government by a majority may be called a 
democracy, but not in the sense of a people ruled 
by public opinion; for a mere majority on any ques- 
tion cannot be said to ever represent an opinion that 
is general or public* Government by a ma- 
jority, instead of representing any general 
opinion, only represents two classes with opposed 
opinions, and is always liable to great abuses. His- 
tory, and especially religious history, is full of in- 
stances of the despotism of majorities as w^ll as of 
minorities. A public opinion which is real can be 
formed only by a consensus representing a far 
greater number of people than a majority, and is 
the only power fit to govern a democracy. Human 
liberty must inevitably perish from the earth un- 
less protected by a public opinion which guides 
and restrains both majorities and minorities. 

A striking feature of our democracy is that it is 
a confederacy of large and small states upon the 
basis of equality of rights. Of the merits of this 
feature of our government, De Tocqueville says: 
**The United States of America do not afford either 
the first or the only instance of confederate States, 
several of which have existed in modern Europe, 
without adverting to those of antiquity. Switzer- 

* Lowell, 7. 



Political Life 143 

land, the Germanic Empire, and the Republic of the 
United Provinces either have been or still are confed- 
erations. In studying the constitutions of these dif- 
ferent countries, the politician is surprised to observe 
that the powers with which they invested the Feder- 
al Government are nearly identical with the privi- 
leges awarded by the American Constitution to the 
Government of the United States. They confer up- 
on the central power the same rights of making peace 
and war, of raising money and troops, and of pro- 
viding for the general exigencies and the common in- 
terests of the nation. Nevertheless the Federal Gov- 
ernment of these different peoples has always been 
as remarkable for its weakness and inefficiency as 
that of the Union is for its vigorous and enterprising 
spirit. Again, the first American Confederation per- 
ished through the excessive weakness of its Govern- 
ment; and this weak Government was, notwithstand- 
ing, in possession of rights even more extensive than 
those of the Federal Government of the present day. 
But the more recent Constitution of the United States 
contains certain principles which exercise a most im- 
portant influence, although they do not at once 
strike the observer. 

''This Constitution, which may at first sight be 
confounded with the federal constitutions which pre- 
ceded it, rests upon a novel theory, which may be 
considered as a great invention in modern political 
science. In all the confederations which had been 
formed before the American Constitution of 1789 
the allied States agreed to obey the injunctions of a 
Federal Government; but they reserv^ed to them- 



144 Democracy Tn America 

selves the right of ordaining and enforcing the exe- 
cution of the laws of the Union. The American 
States which combined in 1789 agreed that the Fed- 
eral Government should not only dictate the laws, 
but that it should execute its own enactments. In 
both cases the right is the same, but the exercise of 
the right is different; and this alteration produced 
the most momentous consequences. 

"In all the confederations which had been form- 
ed before the American Union the Federal Govern- 
ment demanded its supplies at the hands of the sep- 
arate governments; and if the measure it prescribed 
was onerous to any one of those bodies means were 
found to evade its claims: if the State was powerful, 
it had recourse to arms ; if it was weak, it connived 
at the resistance which the law of the Union, its sov- 
ereign, met with, and resorted to inaction under the 
plea of inability. Under these circumstances one of 
the two alternatives has invariably occurred ; either 
the most preponderent of the allied peoples has as- 
sumed the privileges of the Federal authority and 
ruled all the States in its name, or the Federal Gov- 
ernment has been abandoned by its natural support- 
ers, anarchy has arisen between the confederates, 
and the Union has lost all powers of action. 

*'In America the subjects of the Union are not 
States, but private citizens; the national Govern- 
ment levies a tax, not upon the State of Massachu- 
setts, but upon each inhabitant of Massachusetts. 
All former confederate governments presided over 
communities, but that of the Union rules individuals: 
its force is not borrowed, but self-derived ; and it is 



Political Life 145 

served by its own civil and military officers, by its 
own army, and its own courts of justice."* 

A danger to the federal system, thought De 
Tocqueville, is found in the opposition of interest 
between one State and another, and between differ- 
ent sections of the country. *'I am still of opinion," 
he says, **that where there are 100,000,000 of men, 
and forty distinct nations, equally strong, the con- 
tinuance of the Federal Government can only be a 
fortunate accident: whatever faith I may have in the 
perfectibility of man, until human nature is altered, 
and men wholly transformed, I shall refuse to be- 
lieve in the duration of a government which is called 
upon to hold together forty different peoples, dis- 
seminated over a territory equal to one-half of Eu- 
rope in extent; to avoid all rivalry, ambition, and 
struggles between them, and to direct their inde- 
pendent activity to the accomplishment of the same 
designs/'t The Civil War showed that the 
danger to our federal system foreseen by De Tocque- 
ville was a real one. 

"Federalism," according to Bryce, "furnishes 
the means of uniting commonwealths into one na- 
tion under one national government without extin- 
guishing their separate administrations, legislatures, 
and local patriotism. As the Americans of 1787 
would probably have preferred complete State inde- 
pendence to the fusion of their States into a unified 
government. Federalism was the only resource. So 
when the new Germanic Empire, which is really a 

*I, 156. il, 404 



146 Democracy In America 

Federation, was established in 1871, Bavaria and 
Wurtemberg could not have been brought under a 
national government save by a Federal scheme. 
Similar suggestions, as everyone knows, have been 
made for re-settling the relations of Ireland to Great 
Britain, and of the self-governing British colonies to 
the United Kingdom. There are causes and condi- 
tions which dispose independent o^- semi-independ- 
ent communities, or peoples living under loosely com- 
pacted governments, to form a closer union in a Fed- 
eral form. There are other causes and conditions 
which dispose the subjects of one government, or 
sections of these subjects, to desire to make their 
government union less close by substituting a Fed- 
eral for a unitary system. In both sets of cases, the 
centripetal and centrifugal forces spring from the 
local position, the history, the sentiments, the eco- 
nomic needs of those among whom the problem 
arises; and that which is good for one people or po- 
litical body is not necessarily good for another. Fed- 
eralism is an equally legitimate resource whether it 
is adopted for the sake of tightening or for the sake 
of loosening a pre-existing bond. 

"***Federalism supplies the best means of de- 
veloping a new and vast country. It permits an ex- 
pansion, whose extent, and whose rate and manner 
of progress, cannot be foreseen, to proceed with 
more variety of methods, more adaptation of laws 
and administration to the circumstances of each part 
of the territory, and altogether in a more truly nat- 
ural and spontaneous way, than can be expected un- 
der a centralized government, which is disposed to 



Political Life 147 

apply its settled system through all its dominions. 
Thus the special needs of a new region are met by 
the inhabitants in the way they find best; its special 
evils are cured by special remedies, perhaps more 
drastic than an old country demands, perhaps more 
lax than an old country would tolerate : while at the 
same time the spirit of self-reliance among those who 
build up these new communities is stimulated and 
respected. 

'****Federalism prevents the rise of a despotic 
central government, absorbing other powers, and 
menacing the private liberties of the citizens. This 
may now seem to have been an ideal fear, so far as 
America was concerned. It was, however, a very 
real fear among the great-grandfathers of the pres- 
ent Americans, and nearly led to the rejection even 
of so undespotic an instrument as the Federal Con- 
stitution of 1789. Congress (or the President, as 
the case may be) is still sometimes described as a 
tyrant by the party which does not control it, simply 
because it is a central government: and the States 
are represented as bulwarks against its encroach- 
ments."* 

'•'Federalism, if it diminishes the collective force 
of a nation, diminishes also the risk to which its size 
and the diversities of its parts expose it. A nation 
so divided is like a ship built with watertight com- 
partments. When a leak is sprung in one compart- 
ment, the cargo stored there may be damaged, but 
the other compartments remain dry and keep the 
ship afloat. So if social discord or an economic 

• I, 305-1. 



148 Democracy In America 

crisis has produced disorders or foolish legislation 
in one member of the Federal body, the mischief may 
stop at the State frontier instead of spreading through 
and tainting the nation at large. 

''Federalism, by creating many local legislatures 
with wide powers, relieves the national legislature 
of a part of that large mass of functions which 
might otherwise prove too heavy for it. Thus busi- 
ness is more promptly dispatched, and the great cen- 
tral council of the nation has time to deliberate on 
those questions which most dearly touch the whole 
country,"* 

Among the other advantages claimed for feder- 
alism, Bryce goes on to say, is that ''It provides the 
machinery for a better control of the taxes raised 
and expended in a given region of the country, and 
a better oversight of the public works undertaken 
there than would be possible were everything left 
to the Central government. As regards the educa- 
tive effect of numerous and frequent elections, it will 
be shown in a later chapter that elections in America 
are too many and come too frequently. Overtaxing 
the attention of the citizen and frittering away his 
interest, they leave him at the mercy of knots of sel- 
fish adventurers."! 

Matthew Arnold had much to say in praise of 
our federal system, and thought that his own coun- 
try might with advantage, adopt some of its fea- 
tures. Political institutions, he thought, are not of 
intrinsic value, but depend upon their adaptability 



Political Life 149 

to the people. ''Until I went to the United States," 
he says, '*! had never seen a people with institutions 
which seemed expressly and thoroughly suited to 
it."* He remarks of the British House of 
Commons, that it ''is far too large, and that it under- 
takes a quantity of business which belongs more 
properly to local assemblies. The confusion from 
these causes is one which is constantly increasing, 
because, as the country becomes fuller and more 
awakened, business multiplies, and more and more 
members of the House are inclined to take part in it. 
Is not the cure for this found in a course like that 
followed in America, in having a much less numer- 
ous House of Commons, and in making over a large 
part of its business to local assemblies, elected, as the 
House of Commons itself will henceforth be elected, 
by household suffrage? I have often said that we 
seem to need at present, in England, three things in 
especial : more equality, education for the middle 
classes, and a thorough municipal system. A sys- 
tem of local assemblies is but the natural complement 
of a thorough municipal system. Wholes neither 
too large nor too small, not necessarily of equal popu- 
lation by any means, but with characters rendering 
them in themselves fairly homogeneous and coherent, 
are the fit units for choosing their local assemblies. 
Such units occur immediately to one's mind in the 
provinces of Ireland, the Highlands and Lowlands 
of Scotland, Wales, north and south groups of Eng- 
lish counties, such as present themselves in the cir- 
cuits of the judges or under the names of East Anglia 

*p. 115. 



150 Democracy In America 

or the midlands. No one will suppose me guilty of 
the pedantry of here laying out definite districts. I 
do but indicate such units as may enable the reader 
to conceive the kind of basis required for the local 
assemblies of which I am speaking. The business of 
these districts would be more advantageously done 
in assemblies of the kind ; they would form a useful 
school for the increasing number of aspirants to 
public life, and the House of Commons would be re- 
lieved." * 

"The United States Senate is perhaps, of all the 
institutions of that country, the most happily de- 
vised, the most successful in its working. The legis- 
lature of each State in the Union elects two senators 
to the Second Chamber of the national Congress at 
Washington. The senators are the Lords — if we 
like to keep, as it is surely best to keep, for designat- 
ing the members of the Second Chamber, the title to 
which we have been for so many ages habituated. 
Each of the provincial legislatures of Great Britain 
and Ireland would elect members of the House of 
Lords. The colonial legislature also would elect 
members to it; and thus we should be complying in 
the most simple and yet the most signal way possible 
with the present desire of both this country and the 
colonies for a closer union together, for some repre- 
sentation of the colonies in the Imperial Parlia- 
ment." t 

A feature of our democracy which impresses all 
foreign students is its large extent of local self-gov- 
ernmr-nt. After speaking of the absence of local 

♦ p. 139. i p. 143. 



Political Life 151 

government among the nations of Europe, De Tocque- 
ville says: "Nevertheless local assembles of citizens 
constitute the strength of free nations. Town-meet- 
ings are to liberty what primary schools are to 
science ; they bring it within the people's reach, they 
teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A na- 
tion may establish a system of free government, but 
without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot 
have the spirit of liberty."* He points out 
the different forms of local government in America ; 
the township system of New England, where all of 
the people assemble and elect officers to administer 
local affairs; the county system of the South, where, 
owing to the scattered nature of the population, the 
county is the chief unit of local government, and, in- 
stead of an assembly of all the people, an elective 
Board of Commissioners administers local affairs. He 
thinks that local government gives the people an op- 
portunity to enjoy public esteem, to exercise author- 
ity, and to give vent to their passions. It educates 
the people in the knowledge of their rights and in 
the use of their liberty. He says that "the township 
serves as the center for the desire of public esteem, 
the want of exciting interests, and the taste for au- 
thority and popularity, in the midst of the ordinary 
relations of life ; and the passions which commonly 
embroil society change their character when they 
find a vent so near the domestic hearth and the fam- 
ily circle. 

"In the American States power has been dissem- 
inated with admirable skill for the purpose of inter- 

* I. 60. 



152 Democracy In America 

esting the greatest possible number of persons in the 
commonweal. Independently of the electors who 
are from time to time called into action, the body 
politic is divided into innumerable functionaries and 
officers, who all, in their several spheres, represent 
the same powerful whole in whose name they act. 
The local administration thus affords an unfailing 
source of profit and interest to a vast number of in- 
dividuals. * * * 

'The native of New England is attached to his 
township because it is independent and free : his co- 
operation in its affairs ensures his attachment to its 
interest; the well-being it affords him secures his af- 
fection ; and its welfare is the aim of his ambition and 
of his future exertions : he takes a part in every oc- 
currence in the place ; he practices the art of govern- 
ment in the small sphere within his reach ; he accus- 
toms himself to those forms which can alone ensure 
the steady progress of liberty ; he imbibes their spirit ; 
he acquires a taste for order, comprehends the union 
or the balance of powers, and collects clear practical 
notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of 
his rights."* 

De Tocqueville further says that local govern- 
ment is more efficient in local affairs than a national 
government could be, and it cultivates a sense of re- 
sponsibility and preserves that spirit of self-deter- 
mination without which every nation must perish. 
"Granting for an instant," he says, ''that the vil- 
lages and counties of the United States would be 
more usefully governed by a remote authority 

* I, 68. 



Political Life 153 

which they had never seen than by functionaries 
taken from the midst of them — admitting, for the 
sake of argument, that the country would be more 
secure, and the resources of society better employed, 
if the whole administration centered in a single 
arm — still the political advantages which the Amer- 
icans derive from their system would induce me to 
prefer it to the contrary plan. It profits me but 
little, after all, that a vigilant authority should pro- 
tect the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly 
avert all dangers from my path, without my care 
or my concern, if this same authority is the absolute 
mistress of my liberty and of my life, and if it so 
monopolizes all the energy of existence that when 
it languishes everything languishes around it, that 
when it sleeps everything must sleep, that when it 
dies the State itself must perish. 

"In countries of Europe the natives consider 
themselves as a kind of settlers, indifferent to the 
spot upon which they live. The greatest changes 
are effected without their concurrence and (unless 
chance may have apprised them of the event) 
without their knowledge, nay more, the citizen is 
unconcerned as to the condition of his village, the 
police of his street, the repairs of the church or 
of the parsonage : for he looks upon all these 
things as unconcerned with himself, and as the 
property of a powerful stranger whom he calls 
the government. He has only a life interest in 
these possessions, and he entertains no notions of 
ownership or of improvement. This want of in- 
terest in his own affairs goes so far that, if his 



154 Democracy In America 

own safety or that of his children is endangered, 
instead of trying to avert the peril, he will fold 
his arms, and wait till the nation comes to his 
assistance. This same individual, who has so 
completely sacrificed his own free will, has no 
natural propensity to obedience ; he cowers, it is 
true, before the pettiest officer; but he braves the 
law with the spirit of conquered foe as soon as 
its superior force is removed; his oscillations be- 
tween servitude and license are perpetual. When 
a nation has arrived at this state it must either 
change its customs and its laws or perish: the 
source of public virtue is dry, and; though it may 
contain subjects, the race of citizens is extinct."* 

American patriotism seems to have derived 
its inspiration from local institutions. "It is in- 
contestably true," says De Tocqueville, "that the 
love and the habits of republican government in 
the United States were engendered in the town- 
ships and in the provincial assemblies. In a small 
State, like that of Connecticut for instance, where 
cutting a canal or laying down a road is a mo- 
mentous political question, where the State has 
no army to pay and no wars to carry on, and where 
much wealth and much honor cannot be bestowed 
upon the chief citizens, no form of government 
can be more natural or more appropriate than 
that of a republic. But it is this same republican 
spirit, it is these manners and customs of a free 
people, which are engendered and nurtured in 

* I, 91. 



Political Life 155 

the different States, to be afterwards applied to 
the country at large. The public spirit of the 
Union is, so to speak, nothing more than an ab- 
stract of the patriotic zeal of the provinces. Every 
citizen of the United States transfuses his attach- 
ment to his little republic in the common store of 
American patriotism. In defending the Union 
he defends the increasing prosperity of his own 
district, the right of conducting its affairs, and 
the hope of causing measures of improvement to 
be adopted which may be favorable to his own 
interest; and these are motives which are wont 
to stir men more readily than the general inter- 
ests of the country and the glory of the nation."* 

A merit of the American federal system, 
overlooked by all commentators, except Bryce 
and Bourget, and extremely important at this time, 
is that it necessarily tends to prevent or slow-up 
any social movement of a radical nature. The 
personal and property rights of American citizens 
derive their source and receive their protection 
from a multitude of locally independent States. 
Any movement, aiming to effect revolutionary 
changes in the rights of citizens, is not likely to 
gain momentum at the same rate in all of the 
States. While some States may incline towards 
innovation, others will prefer their traditional 
policy of conservatism. While one State is ex- 
perimenting with untried projects, others will 
look on and criticise. Above all, each State will 
try to profit by the mistakes of the others. Thus 

* I, 163. 



156 Democracy In America 

radical movements will not only come about 
gradually but will escape the excesses and wide- 
spread disorders which necessarily follow when 
a whole nation is subjected to a sudden experi- 
ment. 

"The federative system," says Paul Bourget, 
"which tends to scatter the power of the local 
authorities, has the advantage of giving to the in- 
dividual a far larger number of probabilities of 
independence and of rendering almost impossible 
the rise of a dictature. If the organization of so- 
cialism continues to extend in the United States, 
as is very probable, one of the surest obstacles to 
its despotism — for the fact that it is collective 
does not render its despotism any less hateful or 
iniquitous — will be the vigor of the municipal 
centers.'** 

De Tocqueville believed that local govern- 
ment was especially important to a democracy. 
"I believe," he says, "that provincial institutions 
are useful to all nations, but nowhere do they 
appear to me to be more indispensable than 
amongst a democratic people. In an aristocracy 
order can always be maintained in the midst of 
liberty, and as the rulers have a great deal to lose, 
order is to them a first-rate consideration. In 
like manner an aristocracy protects the people 
from the excesses of despotism, because it al- 
ways possesses an organized power ready to resist 
a despot. But a democracy without provincial 
institutions has no security against these evils. 

* p. 322. 



Political Life 157 

How can a populace, unaccustomed to freedom, 
in small concerns, learn to use it temperately in 
great affairs? What resistance can be offered to 
tyranny in a country where every private individ- 
ual is impotent, and where the citizens are united 
by no common tie? Those who dread the license 
of the mob, and those who fear the rule of ab- 
solute power, ought alike to desire the progres- 
sive growth of provincial liberties. 

"On the other hand, I am convinced that 
democratic nations are most exposed to fall be- 
neath the yoke of a central administration, for 
several reasons, amongst which is the following. 
The constant tendency of these nations is to con- 
centrate all the strength of the government in the 
hands of the only power which directly represents 
the people, because beyond the people nothing is 
to be perceived but a mass of e'qual individuals 
confounded together. But when the same power 
is already in possession of all the attributes of the 
government, it can scarcely refrain from pene- 
trating into the details of the administration, and 
an opportunity of doing so is sure to present itself 
in the end, as was the case in France. In the 
French Revolution there were two impulses in 
opposite directions, w^hich must never be confound- 
ed — the one was favorable to liberty, the other 
to despotism. Under the ancient monarchy the 
King was the sole author of the laws, and below 
the power of the sovereign certain vestiges of pro- 
vincial institutions, half destroyed, were still dis- 
tinguishable. These provincial institutions were 



158 Democracy In America 

incoherent, ill-compacted, and frequently absurd; 
in the hands of the aristocracy they had some- 
times been converted into instruments of oppres- 
sion. The Revolution declared itself the enemy 
of royalty and of provincial institutions at the 
same time, it confounded all that had preceded 
it — despotic power and the checks to its abuses — 
in indiscriminate hatred, and its tendency was 
at once to overthrow and to centralize. This 
double character of the French Revolution is a 
fact which has been adroitly handled by the 
friends of absolute power. Can they be accused 
of laboring in the cause of despotism when they 
are defending that central administration which 
was one of the great innovations of the Revolu- 
tion? In this manner popularity may be concil- 
iated with hostility to the rights of the people, 
and the secret slave of tyranny may be the pro- 
fessed admirer of freedom. 

"I have visited the two nations in which the 
system of provincial liberty has been most per- 
fectly established, and I have listened to the opin- 
ions of different parties in those countries. In 
America I met with men who secretly aspired to 
destroy the democratic institutions of the Union; 
in England I found others who attacked the aris- 
tocracy openly, but I know of no one who does 
not regard provincial independence as a great 
benefit. In both countries I have heard a thous- 
and different causes assigned for the evils of the 
State, but the local system was never mentioned 
amongst them. I have heard citizens attribute 



Political Life 159 

the power of prosperity of their country to a mul- 
titude of reasons, but they all placed the advan- 
tages of local institutions in the foremost rank. 
Am I to suppose that when men who are naturally 
so divided on religious opinions and on political 
theories agree on one point (and that one of 
which they have daily experience), they are all 
in error? The only nations which deny the util- 
ity of provincial liberties are those which have 
fewest of them; in other words, those who are 
unacquainted with the institution are the only 
persons who pass a censure upon it."* 

Among the points of difference between the 
government of the United States and other coun- 
tries is the extraordinary power exercised by the 
American judiciary. "In all the civilized coun- 
tries of Europe," says De Tocqueville, "the Gov- 
ernment has always shown the greatest repug- 
nance to allow the cases to which it was itself a 
party to be decided by the ordinary course of 
justice. This repugnance naturally attains its ut- 
most height in an absolute Government; and, on 
the other hand, the privileges of the courts of 
justice are extended with the increasing liberties 
of the people: but no European nation has at 
present held that all judicial controversies, without 
regard to their origin, can be decided by the 
judges of common law. 

"In America this theory has been actually put 
in practice, and the Supreme Court of the United 
States is the sole tribunal of the nation. Its pow- 

* I. 95. 



160 Democracy In America 

er extends to all the cases arising under the laws, to 
treaties made by the executive and legislative 
authorities, to all cases of admiralty and maritime 
jurisdiction, and in general to all points which 
affect the law of nations. It may even be affirmed 
that, although its constitution is essentially judi- 
cial, its prerogatives are almost entirely political. 
Its sole object is to enforce the execution of the 
laws of the Union; and the Union only regulates 
the relations of the Government with the citizens, 
and of the nation with Foreign Powers; the re- 
lations of citizens amongst themselves are almost 
exclusively regulated by the sovereignty of the 
States. 

*'A second and still greater cause of the pre- 
ponderance of this court may be adduced. In 
the nations of Europe the courts of justice are only 
called upon to try the controversies of private 
individuals; but the Supreme Court of the United 
States summons sovereign powers to its bar. When 
the clerk of the court advances on the steps of 
the tribunal, and simply says. The State of New 
York versus the State of Ohio,' it is impossible not 
to feel that the Court which he addresses is no 
ordinary body; and when it is recollected that one 
of these parties represents one million ; and the 
other two millions of men, one is struck by the 
responsibility of the seven judges whose decision is 
about to satisfy or disappoint so large a number of 
their fellow-citizens. 

"The peace, the prosperity, and the very 
existence of the Union are vested in the hands 



Political Life 161 

of the seven judges. Without their active cooper- 
ation the Constitution would be a dead letter: 
the Ejxecutive appeals to them for assistance 
against the encroachments of the legislative pow- 
ers; the Legislative demands their protection from 
the designs of the Executive; they defend the 
Union from the disobedience of the States, the 
States from the exaggerated claims of the Union, 
the public interest against the interests of private 
citizens, and the conservative spirit of ordefr 
against the fleeting innovations of democracy. 
Their power is enormous, but is clothed in the 
authority of public opinion. They are the all- 
powered guardians of a people which respects 
law, but they would be impotent against popular 
neglect or popular contempt. The force of pub- 
lic opinion is the most intractable of agents, be- 
cause its exact limits cannot be defined; and it is 
not less dangerous to exceed than to remain be- 
low the boundary prescribed. 

''The Federal judges must not only be good 
citizens, and men possessed of that information 
and integrity which are indispensable to magis- 
trates, but they must be statesmen — politicians, 
not unread in the signs of the times, not afraid 
to brave the obstacles which can be subdued, nor 
slow to turn aside such encroaching elements as 
may threaten the supremacy of the Union and the 
obedience which is due to the laws."* 

* I, 150. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
POLITICAL LIFE— (Continued). 

DE TOCQUEVILLE SAYS THAT DEMOCRACIES TEND 
TOWARDS CENTRALIZATION — DESTROYING INITIA- 
TIVE AND REDUCING THE PEOPLE TO AUTOMATONS 
—OPPOSING VIEWS ARE TO THE WISDOM OF THIS 
TENDENCY FURNISH THE BASIS OF PARTY DIVISIONS 
—CLASS INFLUENCE IN POLITICS- NO CLASS PARTY 
IN AMERICA BECAUSE NO CLASS HAS DOMINATED 
AND BECAUSE OF A FEELING OF BROTHERHOOD 
AMONG ALL CLASSES. 

De Tocqueville takes the ground that the 
natural tendency of a democracy is towards cen- 
tralization of power Says he: "In politics, as 
well as in philosophy and in religion, the intellect 
of democratic nations is peculiarly open to simple 
and general notions. Complicated systems are 
repugnant to it, and its favorite conception is 
that of a great nation composed of citizens all re- 
sembling the same pattern, and all governed by a 
single power. 

"The very next notion to that of a sole and 
central power, which presents itself to the minds 
of men in the ages of equality, is the notion of 
uniformity of legislation. As every man sees that 
he differs but little from those about him, he can- 
not understand why a rule which is applicable to 
one man should not be equally applicable to all 

[162] 



Political Life 163 

others. Hence the slightest privileges are repug- 
nant to his reason ; the faintest dissimilarities in 
the political institutions of the same people offend 
him, and the uniformity of legislation appears to 
him to be the first condition ot good govern- 
ment." * 

'*If it be true that, in ages of equality, men 
readily adopt the notion of a great central power, 
it cannot be doubted on the other hand that their 
habits and sentiments predispose them to recog- 
nize such a power and to give it their support. 
This may be demonstrated in a few words, as the 
greater part of the reasons, to which the fact may 
be attributed, have been previously stated. As 
the men who inhabit democratic countries have no 
superiors, no inferiors, and no habitual or neces- 
sary partners in their undertakings, they readily 
fall back upon themselves and consider themselves 
as being apart. I had occasion to point this out 
at considerable length in treating of individualism. 
Hence such men can never, without an effort, tear 
themselves from their private affairs to engage in 
public business; their natural bias leads them to 
abandon the latter to the sole visible and perma- 
nent representatives of the interests of the com- 
munity, that is to say, the State. Not only are 
they naturally wanting in taste for public business, 
but they have frequently no time to attend to it. 
Private life is so busy in democratic periods, so 
excited, so full of wishes and of work, that hardly 
any energy or leisure remains to each individ- 

in. 303. 



164 Democracy In America 

ual for public life. I am the last man to con- 
tend that these propensities are unconquerable, 
since my chief object in writing this book has 
been to combat them. I only maintain that at 
the present day a secret power is fostering them in 
the human heart, and that if they are not checked 
they will wholly overgrow it. 

"I have also had occasion to show how the 
increasing love of well-being, and the fluctuating 
character of property, cause democratic nations 
to dread all violent disturbance. The love of 
public tranquility is frequently the only passion 
which these nations retain, and it becomes more 
active and powerful amongst them in proportion 
as all other passions droop and die. This natural- 
ly disposes the members of the communitj^ con- 
stantly to give or to surrender additional rights to 
the central power, which alone seems to be in- 
terested in defending them by the same means that 
it uses to defend itself. "t * * * 

*'In like manner it may be said that every 
central government worships uniformity ; uniform- 
ity relieves it from inquiry into an infinite number 
of small details which must be attended to if rules 
were to be adapted to men, instead of indiscrimi- 
nately subjecting men to rules; thus the govern- 
ment likes what the citizens like, and naturally 
hates what they hate. These common sentiments, 
which, in democratic nations, constantly unite the 
sovereign and every member of the community in 
one and the same conviction, establish a secret and 

,11, 308. 



Political Life 165 

lasting sympathy between them. The faults of 
the government are pardoned for the sake of its 
tastes; public confidence is only reluctantly with- 
drawn in the midst even of its excesses and its 
errors, and it is restored at the first call. Demo- 
cratic nations often hate those in whose hands the 
central power is vested; but they always love that 
power itself. 

"Thus, by two separate paths, I have reached 
the same conclusion. I have shown that the 
principle of equality suggests to men the notion 
of a sole, uniform, and strong government: I have 
now shown that the principle of equality imparts 
to them a taste for it. To governments of this 
kind the nations of our age are therefore tending. 
They are drawn thither by the natural inclination 
of mind and heart; and in order to reach that re- 
sult, it is enough that they do not check themselves 
in their course. I am of opinion, that, in the 
democratic ages which are opening upon us, in- 
dividual independence and local liberties will ever 
be the produce of artificial contrivance; that cen- 
tralization will be the natural form of govern- 
ment."t * * * 

The consequence of this tendency to central- 
ization, he goes on to say, is to diminish local 
efficiency, destroy individual initiative, and reduce 
the people to the condition of a flock of sheep led 
by a shepherd. 

"I think that extreme centralization of govern- 
ment ultimately enervates society, and thus after 

* II. 310. 



166 Democracy In America 

a length of time weakens the government itself; 
but I do not deny that a centralized social power 
may be able to execute great undertakings with 
facility in a given time and on a particular point. 
This is more especially true of war, in which suc- 
cess depends much more on the means of transfer- 
ring all the resources of a nation to one single point 
than on the extent of those resources. Hence it is 
chiefly in war that nations desire and frequently 
require to increase the powers of the central gov- 
ernment. All men of military genius are fond of 
centralization, which increases their strength; and 
all men of centralizing genius are fond of war, 
which compels nations to combine all their powers 
in the hands of the government. Thus the demo- 
cratic tendency which leads men unceasingly to 
multiply the privileges of the State, and to circum- 
scribe the rights of private persons, is much more 
rapid and constant amongst those democratic na- 
tions which are exposed by their position to great 
and frequent wars, than amongst all others. 

'*I have shown how the dread of disturbance 
and the love of well-being insensibly lead demo- 
cratic nations to increase the functions of central 
government, as the only power which appears to be 
intrinsically sufficiently strong, enlightened, and 
secure, to protect them from anarchy. I would 
now add, that all the particular circumstances 
which tend to make the state of a democratic com- 
munity agitated and precarious, enhance this gen- 
eral propensity, and lead private persons more and 
more to sacrifice their rights to their tranquility. A 



Political Life 167 

people is therefore never so disposed to increase 
the functions of central government as at the close 
of a long and bloody revolution, which, after hav- 
ing wrested property from the hands of its former 
possessors, has shaken all belief, and filled the na- 
tion with fierce hatreds, conflicting interests, and 
contending factions. The love of public tranquil- 
ity becomes at such times an indiscriminating pas- 
sion, and the members of the community are apt 
to conceive a most inordinate devotion to order" * 

Of the governments of Europe, he says: "Ev- 
erywhere the State acquires more and more direct 
control over the humblest members of the com- 
munity, and a more exclusive power of governing 
each of them in his smallest concerns. Almost all 
the charitable establishments of Europe were form- 
erly in the hands of private persons or of corpora- 
tions; they are now almost all dependent on the 
supreme government, and in many countries are 
actually administered by that power. The State 
almost exclusively undertakes to supply bread to 
the hungry, assistance and shelter to the sick, work 
to the idle, and to act as the sole reliever of all 
kinds of misery. Education, as well as charity, is 
become in most countries at the present day a na- 
tional concern. The State receives, and often takes, 
the child from the arms of the mother, to hand it 
over to official agents; the State undertakes to 
train the heart and to instruct the mind of each 
generation. Uniformity prevails in the course of 

* IT. 3ir,. 



168 Democracy In America 

public instruction as in everything else ; diversity, 
as well as freedom, is disappearing day by day." * 

"It is evident that most of our rulers will not 
content themselves with governing the people col- 
lectively; it would seem as if they thought them- 
selves responsible for the actions and private con- 
dition of their subjects — as if they had undertaken 
to guide and to instruct each of them in the various 
incidents of life, and to secure their happiness quite 
independently of their own consent. On the other 
hand private individuals grow more and more apt 
to look upon the supreme power in the same light; 
they invoke its assistance in all their necessities, 
and they fix their eyes upon the administration as 
their mentor or their guide. 

"I assert that there is no country in Europe in 
which the public administration has not become, 
not only more centralized, but more inquisitive and 
more minute; it everywhere interferes in private 
concerns more than it did ; it regulates more under- 
takings, and undertakings of a lesser kind ; and it 
gains a firmer footing every day about, above, and 
around all private persons, to assist, to advise, and 
to coerce them.'* f 

''Thus every day renders the exercise of the 
free agency of man less useful and less frequent; 
it circumscribes the will within a narrow range, 
and gradually robs a man of all the uses of him- 
self. * * * 

* ri. 319. i II, 320. 



Political Life 169 

"After having thus successively taken each 
member of the community in its powerful grasp, 
and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then 
extends its arm over the whole community. It 
covers the surface of society with a net-work of 
small complicated rules, minute and uniform, 
through which the most original minds and the most 
energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above 
the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but 
softened, bent, and guided ; men are seldom forced 
by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from 
acting; such a power does not destroy, but it pre- 
vents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it com- 
presses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a 
people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better 
than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of 
which the government is the shepherd.'** 

''Our forefathers were ever prone to make an 
improper use of the notion, that private rights ought 
to be respected ; and we are naturally prone on 
the other hand to exaggerate the idea that the in- 
terest of a private individual ought always to bend 
to the interest of the many.f * * * 

''It would seem that the rulers of our time 
sought only to use men in order to make things 
great; I wish that they would try a little more to 
make great men ; that they would set less value on 
the work, and more upon the workman ; that they 
would never forget that a nation cannot long re- 
main strong when every man belonging to it is 
individually weak, and that no form or combina- 

* II, 333. t 11.343. 



170 Democracy In America 

tion of social polity has yet been devised, to make 
an energetic people out of a community of pusil- 
lanimous and enfeebled citizens."* 

More recent writers seem to agree with De 
Tocqueville on the dangers of centralization. Says 
Freeman : **It strikes me that, the doctrine of State 
Rights was pushed to a mischievous extreme twen- 
ty years and more ago, so there is danger now of 
the opposite doctrine being pushed to a mischievous 
extreme. The more I look at the American Union, 
the more convinced I am that so vast a region, 
taking in lands whose conditions differ so widely 
in everything, can be kept together only by a 
federal system, leaving large independent powers 
in the hands of the several States."! 

Paul Bourget asserts that, ''Democracy is, in 
fact, according to definition, the government of the 
people by the people ; that is to say, it is the empire 
of the majority. In centralized countries the power 
which a majority gives to its representatives is too 
great, too absolute. They are capable of penetrat- 
ing too deeply into individual life ; and past and 
contemporaneous history proves that in fact they 
have always so penetrated, so that republics thus 
established are Caesarisms of long and short dura- 
tion, but alv/ays Caesarisms." 

"The tyranny of a ministry two months in 
power, or that of an emperor who reigns eighteen 
years, is always a tyranny. One of the greatest 
thinkers of France at the present moment, and one 

*II, 343. ip. 111. 



Political Life 171 

of the least known, M. Louis Menard, has given its 
formula in the following admirable aphorism: *A 
centralized republic is not capable of living. Mon- 
archy is the only logical form of unity.' ''* 

Bourget and also De Tocqueville seem to over- 
look the important fact that the democracy of the 
United States is not the rule of the majority, but the 
rule of public opinion which always represents a 
great preponderance of the people, and serves as 
a check on the abuses of the majority. 

Notwithstanding the strong tendency of a dem- 
ocracy towards centralization, De Tocqueville be- 
lieved that man's natural love of liberty would 
prompt him to put a check upon the tendency be- 
fore it reached a despotic stage. 

He says: '*I have sought to point out the dan- 
gers to which the principle of equality exposes the 
independence of man, because I firmly believe that 
these dangers are the most formidable, as well as 
the least foreseen, of all those which futurity holds 
in store; but I do not think that they are insur- 
mountable. The men who live in the democratic 
ages upon which we are entering have naturally 
a taste for independence; they are naturally im- 
patient of regulation, and they are wearied by the 
permanence even of the condition they themselves 
prefer. They are fond of power; but they are 
prone to despise and hate those who wield it, and 
they easily elude its grasp by their own mobility 
and insignificance. These propensities will always 
manifest themselves, because they originate in the 



•p. 321. 



172 Democracy In America 

groundwork of society, which will undergo no 
change ; for a long time they will prevent the estab- 
lishment of any despotism, and they will furnish 
fresh weapons to each succeeding generation which 
shall struggle in favor of the liberty of mankind. 
Let us then look forward to the future with that 
salutary fear which makes men keep watch and 
ward for freedom, not with that faint and idle 
terror which depresses and enervates the heart."* 

Political parties in the United States divide 
according to the opposing views of the people as 
to the extent of power which should be exercised 
by the national and local governments. Upon this 
subject Munsterberg comments as follows: 

''Now if the centralizing and decentralizing 
character of the two parties is borne in mind, their 
further development down to the present day can 
be understood. This development seems discon- 
nected and contradictory only when the slavery 
question is thought to be the main feature and the 
Republicans are accounted the champions of free- 
dom and the Democrats of slavery. Even Bryce, 
who has furnished by far the best account of the 
American party system, underestimates somew^hat 
the inner continuity of the parties. Even he be- 
lieves that the chief mission of the Republican party 
has been to do away with slavery and to recon- 
struct the Southern States, and that since this end 
was accomplished as far back as the seventies, new 
parties ought naturally to have been formed by 

* II, 344. 



Political Life 173 

this time. Although the old organizations have in 
fact persisted, a certain vagueness and lack of vi- 
tality can be detected, he says, in both parties. 
According to that conception, however, it would be 
incomprehensible why those who formerly went 
forth to put an end to slavery now advance to bring 
the Filipinos into subjection, to detain the poor man 
from purchasing his necessities where they are the 
cheapest. 

"As we have seen, the Democrats were the 
party which was true to the Jeffersonian principles, 
and in opposition to the supporters of congressional 
authority defended the rights and free play of the 
individual states. And the Republicans were those 
who wished to exalt beyond any other the authority 
of the Federal Government. This is the key to 
everything which has since come to pass. In the 
last presidential elections there were three great 
issues — ^the tariff, the currency, and the question of 
expansion. In deciding on all three of these points, 
the parties have conformed to their old principles. 
Free-trade versus protective tariff was not a new 
bone of contention. Jefferson's party urged free 
trade with all the nations of the earth at the very 
beginning of the century, and, of course, a decen- 
tralizating party which likes as little supervision and 
paternalism as possible, will always concede to the 
individual his right to buy what he requires where 
it will cost the least. The Democrats did not oppose 
a tariff for revenue, to help defray the public ex- 
penses, but they objected to that further tariff 
which was laid on goods in order to keep the prices 



174 Democracy In America 

of them high and so protect home industries. The 
centralists, that is, the Whigs or Republicans, on 
the contrary, by their supreme confidence in the 
one national government, had early been led to 
expect from it a certain protection of the national 
market and some regulation of the economic strug- 
gle for existence. And a protective tariff was one 
of the main planks in their platform* early in the 
century. 

**It is clear, once m.ore, that the anti-centralists 
had a direct and natural interest in the small man, 
his economic weaknesses and burdens; every mem- 
ber of society must have equal rights and oppor- 
tunity to work out his career. It does not contra- 
dict this that the Democrats believed in slavery. 
In the Southern States the negro had come in the 
course of generations to be looked on as property, 
as a possession to be held and utilized in a special 
way, and any feeling of personal responsibility was 
of a patriarchal and not a political nature. The 
peculiarly democratic element in the position taken 
was the demand that the slavery question be left 
with the separate states to decide. As soon as 
fellow citizens were concerned, the anti-centralist 
party held true to its principles of looking out for 
the members on the periphery of society. In this 
way the party favoured the progressive income tax, 
and has always espoused any cause which would 
assist the working-man against the superior 
force of protected capital, or the farmer 
against the machinations of the stock market. The 
exaggerated notions as to the silver standard of 



Political Life 175 

currency originated outside of the Democratic par- 
ty, and have intrinsically nothing to do with dem- 
ocracy. But as soon as a considerable part of the 
people from one cause or another began really to 
believe that nothing but a silver currency could 
relieve the condition of the artisans and farmers, 
it became logically necessary for the party which 
opposed centralization to adopt and foster this 
panacea, however senseless it might seem to the 
more thoughtful elements within the party. And 
it was no less necessary for the party v/hich up- 
holds federal authority to oppose unconditionally 
anything which would endanger the coinage and 
credit of the country. The gold standard is spe- 
fically a Republican doctrine only v/hen it is under- 
stood to repudiate and oppose all risky experiment- 
ing with bimetalism. 

"In the new imperialistic movement, on the 
other hand, it was the Demxocrats who were put on 
the defensive. Any one who leans away from im- 
perialism must instinctively lean away from mili- 
tarism, which makes for strength at the centre; 
from aggressive movements to annex new lands, 
whereby the owners are deprived of their natural 
rights to manage their own affairs, and from any 
meddling with international politics, for this in- 
volves necessarily increased discretionary powers 
for the central government. It is not that the 
Democrats care less for the greatness of their 
fatherland, but they despise that jingo patriotism 
which abandons the traditions of the country by 
bringing foreign peoples into subjection. It is left 



176 Democracy In America 

for the centralists to meet the new situation square- 
ly, undertake new responsibilities, and convince the 
nation that it is strong and mature enough to play 
a decisive role in the politics of the world. And 
thus the two great parties are by no manner of 
means two rudderless derelicts carried hither and 
thither by the currents ever since the Civil War, 
but, rather, great three-deckers following without 
swerve their appointed courses.'** 

Our countryman, Henry Van Dyke, agrees with 
the foreign interpretation of our great parties. He 
says, ''you will find, in the main, that the Repub- 
licans have a tendency towards centralizing meas- 
ures, and therefore incline to favor national banks, 
a protective tariff, enlargement of executive func- 
tions, colonial expansion, a greater naval and mili- 
tary establishment, and a consequent increase of 
national expenditure ; while the Democrats, as a 
rule, are on the side of non-centralizing measures, 
and therefore inclined to favor a large and elastic 
currency, free trade or tariff for revenue only, 
strict interpretation of the Constitution, an army 
and navy sufficient for police purposes, a progres- 
sive income tax, and a general policy of national 
economy. 

''The important thing to remember is that 
these two forms of the spirit of self-reliance, the 
general and the local, still exist side by side in 
American political life, and that it is probably a 
good thing to have them represented in two great 

* p. 4<». 



Political Life 177 

parties, in order that a due balance may be kept 
between them."* 

Mlinsterberg and Van Dyke are undoubtedly 
right in their view that the fundamental principle 
underlying all political decisions in the United 
States is that involved in the question of the dis- 
tribution of power between the central and local 
governments. But, especially since the Civil War, 
the two great parties have not always lined up con- 
sistently in reference to the fundamental princi- 
ples; and the reason for it seems to have been 
overlooked entirely by Miinsterberg and Bryce. 
The party alignments over the question of slavery 
and the Civil War were such as to render Demo- 
crats in the North and Republicans in the South 
so extremely odious to their respective sections that 
they were practically ostracized from respectable 
society. Hence it has come about that men in the 
North whose political inclination would naturally 
ally them with the Democrats have continued to 
affiliate with the Republicans through sectional 
prejudices and pride in the great work of their 
party in emancipating the negro and in the preser- 
vation of the Union. And similarly, men in the 
South whose political inclination would naturally 
ally them with the Republicans have continued to 
affiliate with the Democrats through sectional prej- 
udice and the fear of a return to negro domination. 
Since 1896, however, as pointed out in Chapter XII, 
political parties have been undergoing a new align- 
ment. 

* p. 6S. 



178 Democracy In America 

So far no special class has dominated either 
political party in the United States. The capital- 
ists have been a greater factor in the control of 
party policies than any other class. Yet the cap- 
italist class has not legislated in its own interest to 
an extent which has aroused general antagonism, 
except among socialists. The farmers, and some- 
times the laboring classes, have complained of legis- 
lation supposed to be specially favorable to the 
capitalists, but both the farmers and the laborers 
have more often cooperated with the capitalists in 
political campaigns. The Republican party, which 
is very largely made up of capitalists, and 
stands for a high protective tariff, has generally 
been able to hold the farmer and labor vote upon 
the plea that protection is as much to the advant- 
age of one class as another. The Republican party 
has rather boasted that it was the friend of the 
laboring man and the farmer. In recent years, 
however, the capitalist class has been a diminish- 
ing factor in politics, and, perhaps for this reason, 
the laboring class has not felt the need of seeking 
its ends in the formation of a labor party. 

In fact, class feeling is not very strong in the 
United States, and the very idea of class control of 
anything is opposed to public sentiment. Class feel- 
ing is weak because classes are not rigid. Men 
are constantly rising from one class to another. All 
classes in the United States more or less inter- 
mingle socially; they meet together and work to- 
gether in the administration of local government, 
in fraternal orders, in religious organizations, and 



Political Life 179 

in various civic associations. Underlying all differ- 
ences in politics is the feeling of brotherhood and 
a belief that fair play can be secured by a face-to- 
face discussion. 

The fact that we have had no serious class 
struggle up to the present time is no guarantee that 
we may not have it in the future. One of the 
strange perversions of human nature is that men 
as individuals may be decidedly self-sacrificing and 
altruistic, but, as an organized class, may be ab- 
solutely cold-blooded and selfish. It seems that 
any economic class is disposed to regard might as 
right, and to grasp everything possible for itself 
v/ithout any regard whatever for the public. There 
is the greatest danger that the despotism of kings 
may be succeeded by the despotism of a class. If 
democracy is to survive men must learn, in their 
organized as in their individual capacity, to place 
the public interest above any personal or class ad- 
vantage. 



CHAPTER IX. 
POLITICAL LIFE (Continued). 

DEMOCRACIES ARE INFERIOR TO ARISTOCRACIES IN 
LEGISLATIVE METHODS AND IN THE ADMINISTRA- 
TION OF LAWS— BUT SUPERIOR IN MAKING LAWS IN 
THE INTEREST OF THE PEOPLE — DEMOCRACIES 
BUNGLE, MAKE MANY BAD LAWS AND WASTE PUBLIC 
MONEY — STATE LEGISLATURES CONTROLLED BY 
LOCAL INTERESTS AND NOTORIOUSLY EXTRAVAGANT 
—CHECKS AGAINST BAD LEGISLATION THROUGH THE 
ACTION OF THE VETO POWER — THE DEVELOPMENT 
OF THE BUDGET SYSTEM AND EXPERT ADVICE. 

Herbert Spencer long ago announced the prin- 
ciple that a monarchy is more efficient in the ad- 
ministration of law than a democracy, but that the 
latter is more apt to make laws in the interest of 
justice. "Manifestly," he says, "on the average of 
cases, a man will protect his own interest more 
solicitously than others will protect them for him. 
Manifestly, where regulations have to be made 
affecting the interests of several men, they are 
most likely to be equitably made when all those 
concerned are present, and have equal shares in 
the making of them. * * * 

"It is inferable, alike from human nature and 
from history, that a single man cannot be trusted 
with the interests of a nation of men, where his 
real or imagined interests clash with theirs. It is 

[180] 



Political Life 181 

similarly inferable from human nature and from his- 
tory, that no small section of a nation, as the nobles, 
can be expected to consult the welfare of the 
people at large in preference to their own. And it 
is further inferable that only in a general diffusion 
of political power, is there a safeguard for the 
general welfare. * * * 

"Was not the election of the French Constit- 
uent Assembly followed by the sweeping away of 
the grievous burdens that weighed down the peo- 
ple — by the abolition of tithes, seignorial dues, 
gabelle, excessive preservation of game — by the 
withdrawal of numerous feudal privileges and im- 
munities — by the manumission of slaves in the 
French colonies? And has not that extension of 
our o\yn electoral system embodied in the Reform 
Bill brought about more equitable arrangements? 
As witness the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the 
equalization of probate and legacy duties. The 
proofs are undeniable. It is clear, both a priori 
and a posteriori, that representative government is 
especially adapted for the establishment and main- 
tenance of just laws."* 

De Tocqueville also observed that an artistoc- 
racy was more skillful in making laws, but that a 
democracy made laws more in the interest of all 
classes. "Democratic laws,** he said, "generally 
tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possi- 
ble number; for they emanate from the majority of 
the citizens, who are subject to error, but who 
cannot have an interest opposed to their own ad- 



* Essay on Representative Gorernment. 



182 Democracy In America 

vantage. The laws of an aristocracy tend, on the 
contrary, to concentrate wealth and power in the 
hands of the minority, because an aristocracy, by 
its very nature, constitutes a minority. It may 
therefore be asserted as a general proposition, that 
the purpose of a democracy in the conduct of its 
legislation is useful to a greater number of citizens 
than that of an aristocracy. This is, however, the 
sum total of its advantages. 

"Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in 
the science of legislation than democracies ever 
can be. They are possessed of a self-control which 
protects them from the errors of temporary excite- 
ment, and they form lasting designs which they 
mature with the assistance of favorable opportuni- 
ties. Aristocratic government proceeds with the 
dexterity of art; it understands how to make the 
collective force of all its laws converge at the same 
time to a given point. Such is not the case with 
democracies, whose laws are almost always in- 
effective or inopportune. The means of democracy 
are therefore more imperfect than those of aristoc- 
racy, and the measures which it unwittingly adopts 
are frequently opposed to its own cause; but the 
object it has in view is more useful. 

"Let us now imagine a community so organ- 
ized by nature, or by its constitution, that it can 
support the transitory action of bad laws, and that 
it can await, without destruction, the general tend- 
ency of legislation ; we shall then be able to con- 
ceive that a democratic government, notwithstand- 
ing its defects, will be most fitted to conduce to the 



Political Life 183 

prosperity of the community. This is precisely 
what has occurred in the United States; and I re- 
peat, what I have before remarked, that the great 
advantage of the Americans consists in their be- 
ing able to commit faults which they may after- 
ward repair."* 

It is very evident that democracies in general 
bungle in their methods of legislation, m.ake and 
unmake laws with too much haste, are guilty of 
mistakes of omission and commission, and, above 
all, spend public money with a disregard of their 
own interest. Of the extravagance of democracies, 
De Tocqueville says: **The disastrous influence 
which popular authority may sometimes exercise 
upon the finances of a State was very clearly seen 
in some of the democratic republics of antiquity, 
in which the public treasure was exhausted in order 
to relieve indigent citizens, or to supply the games 
and theatrical amusements of the populace. It is 
true that the representative system was then very 
imperfectly known, and that, at the present time, 
the influence of popular passion is less felt in the 
conduct of public affairs; but it may be believed 
that the delegate will in the end conform to the 
principles of his constituents, and favor their pro- 
pensities as much as their interests. * * * 

''When, on the contrary, the people is invested 
with supreme authority, the perpetual sense of 
their own miseries impels the rulers of society to 
seek for perpetual ameliorations. A thousand dif- 
ferent objects are subjected to improvement; the 

* I, 242. 



184 Democracy In America 

most trivial details are sought out as susceptible 
to amendment; and those changes which are ac- 
companied by considerable expense are more espe- 
cially advocated, since the object is to render the 
condition of the poor more tolerable, who cannot 
pay for themselves. 

''Moreover, all democratic communities are 
agitated by an ill-defined excitement and a kind of 
feverish impatience, that engender a multitude of 
innovations, almost all of which are attended with 
expense."* 

Extravagant or ill-advised legislation is some- 
times checked in the Congress of the United States 
through the action of one or the other of the dual 
chambers, through the action of committees, or 
through the veto of the President. "The faults of 
bills passed by the House," says Bryce, "are often 
cured by the Senate, where discussion, if not con- 
ducted with a purer public spirit, is at least more 
leisurely and thorough. * * * The blunders, 
whether in substance or form, of the one chamber 
are frequently corrected by the other, and many 
bills fail owing to a division of opinion between 
the Houses. 

"The Speaker had and the managing commit- 
tee now has, through their control of business in 
the House, what practically amounts to a veto up- 
on bills; and not a few thus perish. 

"The President's veto kills off some vicious 
measures. He does not trouble himself about 
defects of form; but where a bill seems to him 

■"I, 218. 



Political Life 185 

opposed to sound policy, it is his constitutional 
duty to disapprove it, and to throw on Confess 
the responsibility of passing it over his veto by a 
two-thirds vote. A good President accepts this 
responsibility."* 

Concerning our State legislatures, he says: 
''The spirit of localism, surprisingly strong every- 
where in America, completely rules them. A 
member is not a member for his State, chosen by 
a district but bound to think first of the general 
welfare of the commonwealth. He is a member 
for Brownsville, or Pompey, or the Seventh dis- 
trict, and so forth, as the case may be. His first 
and main duty is to get the most he can for his 
constituency out of the State treasury, or by 
means of State legislation. No appeal to the 
general interest would have weight with him 
against the interests of that spot. What is more, 
he is deemed by his colleagues of the same party 
to be the sole exponent of the wishes of that spot, 
and solely entitled to handle its affairs. If he 
approves a bill which affects the place and noth- 
ing but the place, that is conclusive. Nobody 
else has any business to interfere. This rule is 
the more readily accepted, because its applica- 
tion all round serves the private interest of every 
other member alike, while members of more en- 
larged views, who ought to champion the inter- 
ests of the State and sound general principles of 
legislation, are rare. When such is the accepted 
doctrine as well as invariable practice, log-rolling 

* 1, 175. 



186 Democracy In America 

becomes natural and almost legitimate. Each 
member being the judge of the measure which 
touches his own constituency, every other member 
supports that member in passing the measure, ex- 
pecting in turn the like support in a like cause. 
He who in the public interest opposes the bad bill 
of another, is certain to find that one opposing, 
and probably with success, his own bill however 
good. 

''The defects noted, as arising in Congress 
from the want of recognized leadership and of 
persons officially bound to represent and protect 
the interests of the people at large, appear in the 
State legislatures, on a smaller scale, no doubt, 
but in an aggravated form, because the level of 
ability is lower and the control of public opinion 
less. There is no one to withstand the petty local- 
ism already referred to ; no one charged with the 
duty of resisting proposals which some noisy sec- 
tion may demand, but whose ultimate mischief, or 
pernicious effect as precedents, thoughtful men 
perceive. There are members for districts, but 
no ni embers for the people of the State. Thus 
many needless bills and many bad bills are passed. 
And when some difficult question arises, it may 
happen that no member is found able to grapple 
with it."* 

* I, 550. 



CHAPTER X. 
POLITICAL LIFE— (Continued). 

POLITICAL CORRUPTION MORE DEBASING IN A DEMOC- 
RACY THAN IN AN ARISTOCRACY — CHARACTER OF 
POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN THE UNITED STATES— 
THE CAUSES OF CORRUPTION AND ORGANIZED EF- 
FORTS TO SUPPRESS IT— CORRUPTION VERY RARE 
IN MOST STATES AND NOW PRACTICALLY OA^ERCOME 
EVERYWHERE. 

Political corruption in a democracy is differ- 
ent from that of an aristocratic government and 
more debasing. ''In aristocratic governments," 
says De Tocqueville, *'the individuals who are plac- 
ed at the head of affairs are rich men, who are 
solely desirous of power. In democracies states- 
men are poor, and they have their fortunes to 
make. The consequence is that in aristocratic 
States the rulers are rarely accessible to corrup- 
tion, and have very little craving for money; 
whilst the reverse is the case in democratic na- 
tions. 

''But in aristocracies, as those who are de- 
sirous of arriving at the head of affairs are pos- 
sessed of considerable wealth, and as the number 
of persons by whose assistance they may rise is 
comparatively small, the government is, if I may 
use the expression, put up to a sort of auction. 
In democracies, on the contrary, those who are 

[187] 



188 Democracy In America 

covetous of power are very seldom wealthy, and 
the number of citizens who confer that power is 
extremely great. Perhaps in democracies the 
number of men who might be bought is by no 
means smaller, but buyers are rarely to be met 
with, and, besides, it would be necessary to buy 
so many persons at once that the attempt is rend- 
ered nugatory. 

**Many of the men who have been in the ad- 
ministration in France during the last forty years 
have been accused of making their fortunes at the 
expense of the State or of its allies; a reproach 
which was rarely addressed to the public charac- 
ters of the ancient monarchy. But in France the 
practice of bribing electors is almost unknown, 
whilst it is notoriously and publicly carried on in 
England. In the United States I never heard a 
man accused of spending his wealth in corrupting 
the populace; but I have often heard the probity 
of public officers questioned; still more frequently 
have I heard their success attributed to low in- 
trigues and immoral practices. 

"If, then, the men who conduct the govern- 
ment of an aristocracy sometimes endeavor to cor- 
rupt the people, the heads of a democracy are 
themselves corrupt. In the former case the mor- 
ality of the people is directly assailed; in the lat- 
ter an indirect influence is exercised upon the 
people which is still more to be dreaded. * * * 

'The corruption of men who have casually 
risen to power has a coarse and vulgar infection 
in it which renders it contagious to the multitude. 



Political Life 189 

On the contrary, there is a kind of aristocratic re- 
finement and an air of grandeur in the depravity 
of the great, which frequently prevent it from 
spreading abroad. 

"The people can never penetrate into the per- 
plexing labyrinth of court intrigues, and it will 
always have difficulty in detecting the turpitude 
which hirks under elegant manners, refined tastes, 
and graceful language. But to pillage the public 
purse, and to vent the favors of the State, are arts 
which the meanest villain may comprehend, and 
hope to practice in his turn/'* 

Since De Tocqueville's time the United States 
has gained the reputation for being exceedingly 
corrupt in politics. Political corruption is the one 
dark spot in our democracy observed by all for- 
eign, as well as native, students of our institutions. 
*'No impression regarding American politics," says 
Bryce, "is more generally diffused in Europe than 
that contained in the question which the traveller 
who has returned from the United States becomes 
so weary of being asked, 'Isn't everybody corrupt 
there?' It is an impression for which the Ameri- 
cans themselves, with their airy way of talking 
about their own country, their fondness for broad 
effects, their enjoyment of a good story and hu- 
morous pleasure in exaggerations generally, are 
largely responsible. European visitors who, gen- 
erally belonging to the wealthier classes, are gen- 
erally reactionary in politics, and glad to find oc- 
casion for disparaging popular government, eager- 

* I. 229. 



190 Democracy In America 

ly catch up and repeat the stories they are told in 
New York or San Francisco. European readers 
take literally the highly coloured pictures of some 
American novels and assume that the descriptions 
there given of certain men and groups 'inside poli- 
tics' — descriptions legitimate enough in a novel — 
hold true of all men and groups following that un- 
savory trade. Europeans, moreover, and English- 
men certainly not less than other Europeans, have 
a useful knack of forgetting their own shortcoming 
when contemplating those of their neighbors ; so 
you may hear men wax eloquent over the depravity 
of transatlantic politicians who will sail very near 
the wind in giving deceptive pledges to their own 
constituents, who will support flagrant jobs done 
on behalf of their own party, who will accept fav- 
ors from, and dine with, and receive at their own 
homes, financial speculators and members of the 
legislature whose aims are just as base, and whose 
standard is just as low as those of the worst con- 
gressman that ever came to push his fortune in 
Washington. "t * * * 

'If, recognizing the fact that the path of the 
politician is in all countries thickly set with snares, 
we leave ideals out of sight and try America by 
the average concrete standard of Europe, we shall 
find that while the legislatures fall much below 
the level of purity maintained in England and Ger- 
many, and also below that of France and Italy, 
the body of her higher officials, in spite of the 
evils fiov/ing from an uncertain tenure, is not. in 



Political Life 191 

point of integrity, at this moment markedly in- 
ferior to the administrators of most European 
countries. This is perhaps less generally true of 
most of the State officials; and it certainly cannot 
be said of those who administer the business of the 
larger cities, for the standard of purity has there 
sunk to a point lower than that which the munici- 
palities of any European country show."* 

Concerning political corruption in the United 
States, Matthew Arnold remarks that ''the Ameri- 
cans themselves use such strong language in de- 
scribing the corrruption prevalent amongst them, 
that they cannot be surprised if strangers believe 
them. For myself, I had heard and read so much 
to the discredit of American political life, how all 
the best men kept aloof from it, and those who 
gave themselves to it were unworthy, that I ended 
by supposing that the thing must actually be so, 
and the good Americans must be looked for else- 
where than in politics. Then I had the pleasure 
of dining with Mr. Bancroft in Washington; and 
however he may, in Sir Henry Main's opinion, over- 
laud the preestablished harmony of American 
democracy, he had at any rate invited to meet me 
half a dozen politicians whom in England we 
should pronounce to be members of Parliament of 
the highest class, in bearing, manners, tone of 
feeling, intelligence, information. I discovered 
that in truth the practice, so common in America, 
of calling f) politician 'a thief does not mean so 
very much more than is meant in England when 

* II. I(i7. 



192 Democracy In America 

we have heard Lord Beaconlield called *a liar/ 
and Mr. Gladstone, *a madman/ It means, that 
the speaker disagrees with the politician in ques- 
tion, and dislikes him. Not that I assent, on the 
other hand, to the thick-and-thin American pa- 
triots, who will tell you that there is no more cor- 
ruption in the politics and administration of the 
United States than in those of England. I believe 
there is more, and that the tone of both is lower 
there; and this from a cause on which I shall have 
to touch hereafter. But the corruption is exag- 
gerated; it is not the wide and deep disease it is 
often represented ; it is such that the good elements 
of the nations may, and I believe will, perfectly 
work it off; and even now the truth of what I 
have been saying as to the suitableness and suc- 
cessful working of American institutions is not 
really in the least affected by it."* 

Without following in further detail the 
mechanism of political corruption, let us pass to 
the question. What are the causes of this corrup- 
tion? Are they rooted in our democratic institu- 
tions or in the low morals of the people? It seems 
to be generally agreed among the students of the 
subject that the chief cause of corruption in Ameri- 
ca is to be found in the wonderful resources of this 
vast continent and the extraordinary opportuni- 
ties which have been open to men of enterprise 
and genius in private careers. Therefore men of 
mediocre ability and inferior moral standards have 
come to dominate the political parties. This, 

*p. 119. 



Political Life 193 

however, did not happen until there had developed 
populous commercial States and largre cities, offer- 
ing a field for controlling elective and appointive 
offices. As soon as the number of State and munici- 
pal offices became sufficiently numerous, the men 
who had failed in business, or v/ho were attracted 
by the small emoluments of governmental jobs, be- 
gan to cooperate to control these offices by build- 
ing up a political machine with a boss at its head 
and an army of subservient place-hunters and 
grafters to support it. 

The better element of men in the community, 
who were absorbed in their business affairs, were 
not indifferent to their duty and obligation as citi- 
zens. They attended the nominating conventions, 
took active part in the elections, and were often 
willing to serve the public as aldermen, county 
commissioners, members of the legislature, or 
otherwise, which exacted only a small part of their 
time. They would have made larger sacrifices, 
and indeed would have gone to almost any length, 
to preserve decent government if they had known 
how to preserve it, and if the political corruption 
had not developed before they were aware of it. 
It came about very naturally that the men who 
wanted and needed the emoluments of office had 
more time to devote to politics than the men who 
could live without office. And the result was that 
the office-seekers gradually gained control of the 
party machinery, so that men outside of the ma- 
chine came to have no voice in the nomination of 
candidates, and no opportunity to serve in the 



194 Democracy In America 

party's councils. Then it was that the better ele- 
ment began to stand aloof from party conventions 
and to limit their political activity to voting. At 
the same time party methods descended to such 
a low plane that self-respecting men felt no dis- 
position to take a hand in them. Of our law-mak- 
ers in Washington, Dickens wrote in 1842: *'It is 
the game of these men, and of their profligate or- 
gans to make the strife of politics so fierce and 
brutal, and so destructive of all self-respect in 
worthy men, that sensitive and delicate-minded 
persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as 
they, be left to battle out their selfish views un- 
checked. And thus the lowest of all scrambling 
fights goes on, and they who in- other countries 
would, from their intelligence and station, most 
aspire to make the laws, do here recoil the farth- 
est from the degradation."* 

When the people in the States and cities, 
where the corruption developed, became conscious 
of the degraded condition of politics, they imme- 
diately began to agitate for reform. The press, 
the pulpit and many respectable politicians cried 
out against the corruption and sought to arouse 
the public conscience. Spasmodic efforts at re- 
form were made in the form of party revolts, new 
parties and independent candidates without sub- 
stantial results. No one seemed to know how to 
cope with the evil. The rem.edy was thought to 
consist merely in inducing the good people to at- 
tend the party conventions and thereby wrest con- 

* p. 175. 



Political Life 195 

trol from the spoilsmen. Accordingly, many edi- 
torials, sermons and lectures were delivered to 
the people on the duties of citizenship. One of 
the first political efforts of Theodore Roosevelt was 
that of lecturing on civic responsibility. It was 
soon evident, however, that editorials, sermons and 
lectures addressed to the miscellaneous public ac- 
complished no permanent results. The forces of 
corruption were thoroughly organized while the 
forces of reform were scattered, had no means of 
cooperating, no leaders to formulate a plan of bat- 
tle, and no funds or corps of workers with which 
to fight. It was at last realized that organized 
evil could be overcome only by organized right- 
eousness; and, with the realization of this fact, 
the reformers began to organize State and munici- 
pal leagues to battle against the political machines. 
From the inception of these leagues rapid progress 
was made in the reformation of State and city 
politics. 

In any consideration of political corruption in 
the United States it should be remembered that its 
field of development has been limited to the very 
populous commercial States and to the larger cit- 
ies of those States; that in perhaps three-fourths 
of the States there has never been any organized 
corruption, and, in most of the small towns, even 
in States where a corrupt machine has existed, 
there has scarcely been an instance of political 
degradation. Furthermore, political corruption in 
the United States has never existed in that debased 
form which involves bribery, stealing of public 



196 Democracy In America 

money or other acts of personal dishonor, except 
in a few cases where the guilty have been convict- 
ed and severely punished. In regard to the exist- 
ence of bribery in the United States, Munsterberg 
says, "it is probable that nine-tenths of the charges 
are exaggerated and slanderous. The punish- 
ments are so considerable, the means of investi- 
gation so active, and the public watchfulness so 
keen, both on account of the party hostility and by 
virtue of a sensational press, that it would be hard- 
ly comprehensible psychologically, if political 
crime in the lowest strata of city or state were to 
be really anything but the exception. The many 
almost fanatically conducted investigations pro- 
duce from their mountains of transactions only the 
smallest mice, and the state attorney is seldom 
able to make out a case of actual bribery." 

In Ostrogorski's "Democracy and Party Sys- 
tem," which embodies the most thorough study yet 
made of political corruption in the United States, 
he expresses the following hopeful view of our 
efforts to overcome the evil: 

"The task is a gigantic one; the citizen has to 
be- reinvested with his power over the common- 
wealth, and^the latter restored to its proper sphere; 
the separation between society at large and politics 
must be ended, and the divorce between politics 
and morality annulled; civic indifference must 
give place to an alert and vigilant public spirit; 
the conscience of the citizen must be set free 
from the formalism which has enslaved it; those 
who confer and who hold power must be guided 



Political Life 197 

by the reason of things, and not by conventional 
works; superiority of character and of intelligence, 
that is to say, real leadership, dethroned by politi- 
cal mechanism must be reinstated in the govern- 
ance of the Republic; authority as v^ell as liberty, 
now usurped and trafficked under the party flag 
and in the name of democracy, must be rehabili- 
tated in the commonwealth. 

"Certainly the task is tremendous, but not 
hopeless. And the proof of it is that a portion, 
small as it is, of what has to be done, is already 
accomplished. The last few years, as we have 
seen, have been marked by an awakening of the 
civic conscience. The business community dis- 
plays a much keener interest in local public af- 
fairs than formerly. Cultivated society and, in 
particular, the rising generation, descend into the 
political arena with an ardour which was unknown 
thirty years ago. Public morality has advanced ; 
society has become more alive to right and wrong. 
Public opinion is beginning to extricate itself from 
the narrow and deadly groove of parties."* 

*p 419. 



CHAPTER XL 
POLITICAL LIFE (Continued). 

SUPREMACY OF PUBLIC OPINION IN A DEMOCRACY— DE 
TOCQUEVILLE THINKS THAT A DEMOCRACY MAY BE 
AS TYRANNICAL AS A DESPOT— MAY REPRESS INDI- 
VIDUAL THOUGHT— DEBASE THE CITIZENS, AND 
MAKE THEM SERVILE AND SYCOPHANT— SO FAR, 
SAYS BRYCE, THE TilAJORITY IN AMERICA HAS NOT 
ACTED TYRANNICALLY— THE CHECKS AGAINST TY- 
RANNY OF THE MAJORITY ARE FOUND IN THE RE- 
STRAINING POWER OF COURTS, THE PRESS AND 
VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 

De Tocqueville calls attention to the fact that 
the sway of public opinion is far greater in a dem- 
ocracy than in an aristocracy. ''When the ranks 
of society are unequal," he says, **and men unlike 
each other in condition, there are some individuals 
invested with all the power of superior intelligence, 
learning, and enlightenment, whilst the multitude 
is sunk in ignorance and prejudice. Men living at 
these artistocratic periods are therefore naturally 
induced to shape their opinions by the superior 
standard of a person or a class of persons, whilst 
they are averse to recognize the infallibility of the 
mass of the people. 

**The contrary takes place in ages of equality. 
The nearer the citizens are drawn to the common 
level of an equal and similar condition, the less 

[198] 



Political Life 199 

prone does each man become to place implicit 
faith in a certain man or a certain class of men. 
But this readiness to believe the multitude in- 
creases, and opinion is more than ever mistress of 
the world. Not only is common opinion the only 
guide which private judgment retains amongst a 
democratic people, but amongst such a people it 
possesses a power infinitely beyond what it has 
elsewhere. At periods of equality men have no 
faith in one another, by reason of their common 
resemblance ; but this very resemblance gives them 
almost unbounded confidence in the judgment of 
the public ; for it would not seem probable, as they 
are all endowed with equal means of judging, but 
that the greater truth should go with the greater 
number. 

''When the inhabitant of a democratic coun- 
try compares himself individually with all those 
about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal 
of any one of them ; but when he comes to survey 
the totality of his fellows, and to place himself in 
contrast to so huge a body, he is instantly over- 
whelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and 
weakness. The same equality which renders him 
independent of each of his fellow-citizens taken 
severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to 
the influence of the greater number. The public 
has therefore among democratic people a singular 
power, of which aristocratic nations could never 
so much as conceive an idea; for it does not per- 
suade to certain opinions, but it enforces them, and 
infuses them into the faculties by a sort of enor- 



200 Democracy In America 

mous pressure of the minds of all upon the reason 
of each. 

'*In the United States the majority undertakes 
to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for 
the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from 
the necessity of forming opinions of their own. 
Everybody there adopts great numbers of theories, 
on philosophy, morals, and politics, without inquiry, 
upon public trust; and if we look to it very nar- 
rowly, it will be perceived that religion herself 
holds her sway there, much less as a doctrine of 
revelation than as a commonly received opinion. 
The fact that the political laws of the Americans 
are such that the majority rules the community 
with sovereign sway, materially increases the 
power which that majority naturally exercises over 
the mind."t * * * 

**I argue that it may readily acquire too much 
preponderance, and confine the action of private 
judgment within narrower limits than are suited 
either to the greatness or the happiness of the hu- 
man race. In the principle of equality I very clear- 
ly discern two tendencies ; the one leading the mind 
of every man to untried thoughts, the other inclined 
to prohibit him from thinking at all. And I per- 
ceive how, under the dominion of certain laws, 
democracy would extinguish that liberty of the 
mind to which a democratic social condition is fav- 
orable; so that, after having broken all the bond- 
age once imposed on it by ranks or by men, the 

t II, IB. 



Political Life 201 

human mind would be closely fettered to the gen- 
eral will of the greatest number. 

"If the absolute power of the majority were 
to be substituted by democratic nations, for all the 
different powers which checked or retarded over- 
much the energy of individual minds, the evil would 
only have changed its symptoms. Men would not 
have found the means of independent life; they 
would simply have invented (no easy task) a new 
dress for servitude. There is — and I cannot repeat 
it too often — ^there is in this, matter for profound 
reflection for those who look on freedom as a holy 
thing, and who hate not only the despot, but despot- 
ism. For myself, when I feel the hand of power 
lie heavy on my brow, I care but little to know 
who oppresses me ; and I am not the more disposed 
to pass beneath the yoke, because it is held out to 
me by the arms of a million of men."* 

The unlimited power of the majority, De Toc- 
queville thinks, may be as tyrannical as that of a 
despot. **A majority taken collectively," he says, 
"may be regarded as a being whose opinions, and 
most frequently whose interests, are opposed to 
those of another being, which is styled a minority. 
If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute 
power, may misuse that power by wronging his 
adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to 
the same reproach? Men are not apt to change 
their characters by agglomeration; nor does their 
patience in the presence of obstacles increase with 
the consciousness of their strength. And for these 

♦II, 13. 



202 Democracy In America 

reasons I can never willingly invest any number of 
my fellow-creatures with that unlimited authority 
which I should refuse to any one of them."t 

''When I see that the right and the means of 
absolute command are conferred on a people or 
upon a king, upon an aristocracy or a democracy, 
a monarchy or a republic, I recognize the germ of 
tyranny, and I journey onward to a land of more 
hopeful institutions. 

''In my opinion the main evil of the present 
democratic institutions of the United States does 
not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their 
weakness, but from their overpowering strength; 
and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive 
liberty which reigns in that country as at the very 
inadequate securities which exist against tyranny."* 

Public opinion, De Tocqueville thinks, may re- 
press free discussion, and extinguish in men the 
incentive to advance new ideas or to assert their 
convictions. "The authority of a king is purely 
physical, and it controls the actions of the subject 
without subduing his private will; but the majority 
possesses a power which is physical and moral at 
the same time ; it acts upon the will as well as upon 
the actions of men, and it represses not only all 
contest, but all controversy. I know no country in 
which there is so little true independence of mind 
and freedom of discussion as in America." ft 

t I. 264. * I. 265. tt I, 267. 



Political Life 203 

**In America the majority raises very form- 
idable barriers to the liberty of opinion; within 
these barriers any author may write whatever he 
pleases, but he will repent it if he ever step be- 
yond them. Not that he is exposed to the terrors 
of an auto-da-fe, but he is tormented by the slights 
and persecutions of daily obloquy. ' His political 
career is closed forever, since he has offended the 
only authority which is able to promote his suc- 
cess."! * * * 

"If great writers have not at present existed in 
America, the reason is very simply given in these 
facts; there can be no literary genius without free- 
dom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not 
exist in America. "ft * * * 

De Tocqueville points out further, that the 
tyranny of the majority brings about a certain de- 
basement of the national character in developing 
sycophancy and demagogueism. "In free coun- 
tries," he says, "where every one is more or less 
called upon to give his opinion in the affairs of 
state; in democratic republics, where public life is 
incessantly commingled with domestic affairs, where 
the sovereign authority is accessible on every side, 
and where its attention can almost always be at- 
tracted by vociferation, more persons are to be 
met with who speculate upon its foibles and live 
at the cost of its passions than in absolute monarch- 
ies. Not because men are naturally worse in these 
States than elsewhere, but the temptation is 

t I. 268. tt I, 269. 



204 Democracy In America 

stronger, and of easier access at the same time. 
The result is a far more extensive debasement of 
the characters of the citizens. 

"Democratic republics extend the practice of 
currying favor with the many, and they introduce 
it into a greater number of classes at once; this is 
one of the most serious reproaches that can be 
addressed to them. In democratic states organized 
on the principles of the American republics, this 
is more especially the case, where the authority of 
the majority is so absolute and so irresistible that 
a man must give up his rights as a citizen, and 
almost abjure his quality as a human being, if he 
intends to stray from the track which it lays down. 

"In that immense crowd which throngs the 
avenues to powder in the United States, I found 
very few men who displayed any of that manly 
candor and that masculine independence of opinion 
which frequently distinguished the Americans in 
former times, and which constitutes the leading 
feature in distinguished characters wherever they 
may be found."* The sycophants of a democ- 
racy flatter the majority and fawn at its feet 
in the same degrading way that the subjects of a 
monarchy flatter their king and cower in his pres- 
ence.f 

Bryce believes that the American Congress 
has, on various occasions, acted harshly and un- 
wisely, but that the majority has not thus far com- 
mitted acts against the minority which could be 

■» I. 271. t I, 272. 



Political Life 205 

reasonably characterized as tyrannical. Further- 
more, he does not think that the several States, in 
their constitutions or laws, have conspicuously 
abused their power to the injury of any class.* 
He, however, ventures no precise definition 
of what constitutes tyranny against a minority, and 
indeed it is difficult for any one to formulate such 
a definition. Among Americans themselves there 
are all shades of opinion as to what the limitations 
of a majority should be. The most that any one 
can claim is that the freedom of an individual 
should not be interfered with beyond what is abso- 
lutely necessary to safeguard the public interest; 
and there will always be radical differences of 
opinion as to what is a legitimate interference. For 
instance, ex-President Taft believes that the recent 
total prohibition of the sale of all alcoholic drinks 
is a limitation of freedom beyond what is needful, 
and a large minority of American citizens agree 
with him. There can be no doubt of the fact that 
there is a strong tendency in a democracy for any 
issue, appealing to the passions of the people, to be 
pushed to an absurd extreme. The reason for this 
is, that, as soon as a majority of the people are 
won over in any issue, hundreds of politicians, who 
were never heard from on the question when it 
was unpopular, seek to gain office or hold office 
by loud professions of faith in the popular side, and 
often go to an extreme heretofore undreamed of. 

As to the action of public opinion in suppres- 
sing freedom of thought, or in persecuting a man 

* n, 340. 



206 Democracy In America 

for his unpopular views, Bryce does not think that 
the American democracy is often guilty of this 
offense. He says: *'If social persecution exists in 
America today, it is only in a few dark corners. 
One may travel all over the North and West, ming- 
ling with all classes and reading the newspapers, 
without hearing of it. As respects religion, so long 
as one does not openly affront the feelings of one's 
neighbors, one may say what one likes, and go or 
not go to church. Doubtless a man, and still more 
a woman, may be better thought of, especially in 
a country place or small town, for being a church 
member and Sunday School teacher. But no one 
suffers in mind, body, or estate for simply holding 
aloof from a religious or any other voluntary asso- 
ciation. He would be more likely to suffer in an 
English village. Even in the South, where a stricter 
standard of orthodoxy is maintained among the 
Protestant clergy than in the North or West, a lay- 
man may think as he pleases. It is the same as 
regards social questions, and of course as regards 
politics. To boycott a man for his politics, or even 
to discourage his shop in a way not uncommon in 
parts of rural England and Ireland, would excite 
indignation in America; as the attempts of some 
labour organizations to boycott firms resisting 
strikes have aroused strong displeasure. If in the 
South a man took to cultivating the friendship of 
negroes and organizing them in clubs, or if in the 
West a man made himself the champion of the 
Indians, he might find his life become unpleasant. 



Political Life 207 

though one hears little of recent instances of the 
kind."* 

Restraints against the tyranny of the majority 
in any legislative body in America are found in the 
existence of dual bodies, in the veto power of the 
President and of the governors of the States, and 
in the constitutional limitations safeguarded by the 
superior power of the courts. Says DeTocqueville: 
"The power vested in the American courts of pro- 
nouncing a statute to be unconstitutional forms one 
of the most powerful barriers which has ever been 
devised against the tyranny of political assem- 

blies.^t 

The checks against the tyranny of public opin- 
ion outside of legislation are found only in the con- 
stitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, free- 
dom of the press, and freedom of association. 
Whenever any number of citizens wish to launch a 
protest or propaganda of any kind they effect an 
organization, resort to the platform and the press, 
and generally find, through the fellowship of as- 
sociation, sufficient courage to assert themselves 
against the majority. As long as citizens have this 
freedom there is little danger of intimidating the 
individual through mere pressure of public opinion. 

* n. 342. t I. 101. 



CHAPTER XII. 
POLITICAL LIFE— (Continued). 

DB TOCQUEVILLE THINKS THAT DEMOCRACIES TEND TO 
CHOOSE INFERIOR MEN TO OFFICE— THE MASSES 
HAVE NEITHER THE WISDOM NOR THE DISPOSITION 
TO CHOOSE THE BEST MEN— THE BEST MEN RE)- 
LUCTANT TO ENTER PUBLIC LIFE— BRYCE GIVES HIS 
REASONS WHY INFERIOR MEN ARE CHOSEN— BOTH 
BRYCE AND DE TOCQUEVILLE FAIL TO GRASP THE 
ESSENTIALS OF WISE LEADERSHIP IN A DEMOCRACY 
—VIEWS OF CHARLES H. COOLEY ON DEMOCRATIC 
LEADERSHIP. 

According to De Tocqueville, democracies 
have a tendency to choose inferior men to office, 
for the reason that the masses have neither the 
wisdom nor the disposition to choose the best men. 
On the other hand, the best men are reluctant to 
enter public life. "Many people in Europe," he 
says, "are apt to believe without saying it, or to 
say without believing it, that one of the great ad- 
vantages of universal suffrage is, that it entrusts 
the direction of public affairs to men who are 
worthy of the public confidence. They admit 
that the people is unable to govern for itself, but 
they aver that it is always sincerely disposed to 
promote the welfare of the State, and that it in- 
stinctively designates those persons who are ani- 
mated by the same good wishes, and who are the 

V 

[208] 



Political Life 209 

most fit to wield the supreme authority. I confess 
that the observations I made in America by no 
means coincide with these opinions. On my ar- 
rival in the United States I was surprised to find 
so much distinguished talent among the subjects 
and so little among the heads of the government. 
It is a well authenticated fact, that at the present 
day the most able men in the United States are 
rarely placed at the head of affairs; and it must 
be acknowledged that such has been the result in 
proportion as democracy has outstepped all its 
former limits. The race of American statesmen 
has evidently dwindled most remarkably in the 
course of the last fifty years."t * * * 

**In the United States the people is not dis- 
posed to hate the superior classes of society; but 
it is not very favorably inclined towards them, 
and it carefully excludes them from the exercise 
of authority." * * * 

"I hold it to be suflficiently demonstrated that 
universal suffrage is by no means a guarantee of 
the wisdom of popular choice, and that v/hatever its 
advantages may be, this is not one of them."* 

Concerning our choice of inferior men for 
president, James Bryce says: ^'Europeans ask, and 
Americans do not always explain, how it happens 
that this great office, the greatest in the world, 
unless we except the papacy, to which any man 
can rise by his own merits, is not more frequently 
filled by great and striking men? * * 

t I. 201. * I, 203. 



210 Democracy In America 

''Several reasons may be suggested for the 
fact, which Americans are themselves the first to 
admit. 

"One is that the proportion of first-rate abil- 
ity drawn into politics is smaller in America than 
in most European countries. This is a phenome- 
non whose causes must be elucidated later: in the 
meantime it is enough to say that in France and 
Italy, where half-revolutionary conditions have 
made public life exciting and accessible ; in Ger- 
many, where an admirably organized civil service 
cultivates and develops statecraft With unusual 
success; in England, where many persons of wealth 
and leisure seek to enter the political arena, while 
burning questions touch the interests of all classes 
snd make men eager observers of the combatants, 
the total quantity of talent devoted to parliamen- 
tiary or administrative work is far larger, relative- 
ly to the population, than in America, where much 
of the best ability, both for thought and for action, 
for planning and for executing, rushes into a 
field which is comparatively narrow in Europe, the 
business of developing the material resources of 
the country. 

''Another is that the methods and habits of 
Congress, and indeed of political life generally, 
seem to give fewer opportunities for personal dis- 
tinction, fewer matters in which a man may com- 
mend himself to his countrymen by eminent capac- 
ity in thought, in speech, or in administration, than 
is the case in the free countries of Europe. * * * 



Political Life 211 

"A third reason is that eminent men make 
more enemies, and give those enemies more assail- 
able points, than obscure men do. They are there- 
fore in so far less desirable candidates."t * * * 
* * * 

''But in the selection of a candidate many con- 
siderations have to be regarded besides personal 
merits, whether they be merits of a candidate, or 
of a possible President. The chief of these con- 
siderations is the amount of support which can be 
secured from different States or from different 
regions, or, as the Americans say, sections of the 
Union. * * 

'"It is more important to gratify a doubtful 
State than one you have got already; and hence 
— caeteris paribus, a candidate from a doubtful 
State, such as New York or Indiana, is to be pre- 
ferred."* 

De Tocqueville qualifies his views, in regard 
to our choice of inferior men to office, by saying 
that our democracy does choose the ablest men in 
times of great danger or when any great issue is 
to be faced. "When a State is threatened," he 
says, ''by serious dangers, the people frequently 
succeeds in selecting the citizens who are most 
able to serve it. * * Great characters are then 
thrown into relief, as edifices which are concealed 
by the gloom of night are illuminated by the glare 
of a conflagration. At those dangerous times gen- 
ius no longer abstains from presenting itself in 
the arena; and the people, alarmed by the perils 

il, 74. *I, 77. 



212 Democracy In America 

of its situation, buries its envious passions in a 
short oblivion. Great names may then be drawn 
from the balloting-box. 

*1 have already observed that the American 
statesmen of the present day are very inferior to 
those who stood at the head of affairs fifty years 
ago. This is as much a consequence of the cir- 
cumstances as of the laws of the country. "When 
America was struggling in the high cause of inde- 
pendence to throw off the yoke of another coun- 
try, and when it was about to usher a new nation 
into the world, the spirits of its inhabitants were 
roused to the height which their great efforts re- 
quired. In this general excitement the most dis- 
tinguished men were ready to forestall the wants of 
the community, and the people clung to them for 
support, and placed them at its head. But events 
of this magnitude are rare, and it is from an inspec- 
tion of the ordinary course of affairs that our 
judgment must be formed.'' * 

It is seriously to be doubted, however, w^heth- 
er either Bryce or De Tocqueville comprehended 
tke essentials of wise leadership in a democracy. 
It is not at all self-evident that the most brilliant 
or most distinguished men make the v/isest politi- 
cal leaders. ''Some tendency to isolation and 
spiritual impoverishment," says Cooley, *'is likely 
to go with any sort of distinction or privilege. 
Wealth, culture, reputation, bring special gratifi- 
cations. These foster special tastes, and these in 

turn give rise to special ways of living and think- 
• r. 2o.'>. 



Political Life 213 

ing which imperceptibly separate one from com- 
mon sympathy and put him in a special class. If 
one has a good income, for instance, how natural 
it is to spend it, and how naturally, also, that ex- 
penditure withdrav/s one from familiar intercourse 
with people who have not a good income. Success 
means possessions, and possessions are apt to im- 
prison the spirit. * * * It is right to have high 
and unusual aims and activities, but hard to keep 
them free from pride, gloom and other vices of iso- 
lation. Only a very sane mind can carry dis- 
tinction and fellowship without spilling either. * * 

•'Moreover, conspicuous and successful per- 
sons are more likely than the commonality to be 
institutionalized, to have sacrificed human nature 
to specialty. To succeed in the hour one must be 
a man of the hour, and must ordinarily harness 
his very soul to some sort of contemporary activity 
which may after all be of no real worth. An up- 
per class is institutional in its very essence, since 
it is control of institutions that makes it an upper 
class, and men can hardly keep this control except as 
they put their hearts into it. Successful business 
men, lawyers, politicians, clergymen, editors and 
the like are such through identifying their minds, 
for better or worse, with the present activities and 
ideals of commercial and other institutions. 'Sel- 
dom does the new conscience, when it seeks a 
teacher to declare to men what is wrong, find him 
in the dignitaries of the church, the state, the cul- 
ture, that is. The higher the rank the closer the 



214 Democracy In America 

tie that binds those to what is but ought not to 
be.' "* 

Great men do not, to the extent commonly 
supposed, influence their contemporaries, much 
less lead them. On the contrary, great men rather 
get their inspiration and ideal from the sympa- 
thetic insight into the masses and rise to new 
heights of idealism which mostly react upon later 
generations. .The great movements in history, 
generally arise from the masses themselves, and 
not from contemporary men of genius. **The 
originality of the masses," says Cooley, **is to be 
found not so much in formulated idea as in senti- 
ment. In capacity to feel and to trust those senti- 
ments which it is the proper aim of social devel- 
opment to express, they are, perhaps, commonly 
superior to the more distinguished or privileged 
classes. The reason is that their experiences us- 
ually keep them closer to the springs of human 
nature, and so more under the control of its primary 
impulses. 

"Radical movements aiming to extend the 
application of higher sentiment have generally 
been pushed on by the common people, rather than 
by privileged orders, or by conspicuous leader- 
ship of any sort. This seems to be true of Chris- 
tianity in all ages, and of the many phases of mod- 
ern democracy and enfranchisement. In Ameri- 
can history, particularly, both the revolution which 
gave us Independence and the civil war which 
abolished slavery and reunited the country, were 

♦p. 140. 



Political Life 215 

more generally and steadfastly supported by the 
masses than by the people of education and wealth. 
Mr. Higginson writing on the Cowardice of Cul- 
ture, asserts that at the opening of the Revolu- 
tion the men of wealth and standing who took the 
side of liberty were so few that they could be 
counted, and that 'there never was a period in our 
history, since the American nation was independ- 
ent, when it would not have been a calamity to 
have it controlled by its highly educated men 
alone.' And in England also it was the masses 
who upheld abolition in the colonies and sym- 
pathized with the North in the American struggle. 

*'The common people, as a rule, live more in 
the central current of human experience than the 
men of wealth or distinction. Domestic morality, 
religious sentiment, faith in man and God, loyalty 
to country and the like, are the fruit of the human 
heart growing in homely conditions, and they easi- 
ly wither when these conditions are lost. To be 
one among many, without individual pretention, 
is in one way a position of security and grandeur. 
One stands, as it were, with the human race at his 
back, sharing its claim on truth, justice and God. 
Qtd quaerit habere privata amittit commiinia; the 
plain man has not conspicuously gained private 
things, and should be all the richer in things that 
are common, in faith and fellowship." * 

While the masses do not generally choose the 
most distinguished men, they do, upon the whole, 
choose the men best fitted to carry forward the 

*■ p. 137. 



216 Democracy In America 

vital tendencies. They display an insight in sing- 
ling out the best men which is very little under- 
stood by writers on politics. 'The sentiment of 
the people," says Cooley, "is more readily and 
successfully exercised in their judgment of per- 
sons. Montesquieu, in discussing republican gov- 
ernment, advocated on this ground an almost uni- 
versal manhood suffrage in the choosing of repre- 
sentatives. 'For,' says he, 'though few can tell 
the exact degree of men's capacities, yet there are 
none but are capable of knowing in general 
whether the person they choose is better quali- 
fied than most of his neighbors.' The plainest 
men have an inbred shrewdness in judging human 
nature which makes them good critics of persons 
even when impenetrable to ideas. This shrewd- 
ness is fostered by a free society, in which every 
one has to make and hold his own place among 
his fellows; and it is used with much effect in 

politics and elsewhere as a guide to sound ideas. 
* * * 

"On this shrewd judgment of persons the ad- 
vocate of democracy chiefly grounds his faith 
that the people will be right in the long run. The 
old argument against him runs as follows: de- 
mocracy is the rule of the many; the many are in- 
competent to understand public questions: hence 
democracy is the rule of incompetence. Thus 
Macauley hold that institutions purely dem.ocratic 
must sooner or later destroy liberty or civilization 
or both ; and expected a day of spoliation in the 
United States; 'for with you the majority is the 



Political Life- 217 

government and has the rich absolutely at its 
mercy/ More recent writers of standing have 
taken the same view, like Lecky, who declares that 
the rule of the majority is the rule of ignorance, 
since the poor and the ignorant are the largest 
proportion of the population. 

*To this our democrat will answer, 'The 
many, whether rich or poor, are incompetent to 
grasp the truth in its abstractness, but they reach 
it through personal symbols, they feel their way 
by sympathy, and their conclusions are at least 
as apt to be right as those of any artificially se- 
lected class.' And he will perhaps turn to Ameri- 
can history, which is, on the whole, a fairly con- 
vincing demonstration that the masses are not 
incapable of temperate and wise decision, even 
on matters of much difficulty. "t * * * 

*'So in answer to the question. Just what do 
the undistinguished masses of the people con- 
tribute to the general thought? we say. They con- 
tribute sentiment and common-sense, which gives 
momentum and general direction to progress, and, 
as regards particulars, finds its way by a shrewd 
choice of leaders. It is into the obscure and in- 
articulate sense of the multitude that the man of 
genius looks in order to find those vital tendencies 
whose utterance is his originality. As men in 
business get rich by divining and supplying a po- 
tential want, it is a great part of all leadership 
to perceive and express what the people have 
already felt.*'* 

- p. 14fi. • p. 148. 



218 Democracy In America 

President Wilson is a good example of leader- 
ship of this kind; for what ever else may be said 
of him, there can be no doubt of the fact that, 
more than any other statesman of our time, he has 
caught, interpreted and made articulate, the spirit 
and vital tendencies of modern democracy. 

It is not to be denied that the masses in Amer- 
ica have often made ludicrous mistakes in the se- 
lection of leaders, but such mistakes have been 
due to defective political organization which has 
not enabled the citizens to be supplied with suffi- 
cient information, or has not given them time 
enough to digest the information and to deliberate 
over it. Also, due to defective organization, the 
masses have not had an opportunity to express 
their real preferences in the choice of candidates. 

While the most distinguished men may not 
always be the fittest to govern, still a democracy 
does often put forward very inferior men for 
leadership. In so far as the democracy of the 
United States has chosen inferior leaders, the main 
reasons therefor seem to be found in two funda- 
mental facts. First, the greater rewards, char- 
acteristic of all new countries, offered in private 
careers. And second, the supremacy of a cer- 
tain type of men which ha^ dominated all domains 
of American life from the Revolution down to the 
beginning of the twentieth century, with the ex- 
ception of a short period covering the Civil War. 
In America and in every other great nation there 
have been distinguishable two very opposite types 
of men, besides those familiarly known as con- 



Political Life 219 

servatives and radicals. One of these types may 
be designated as the pragmatic, which possesses 
two striking characteristics; first, great ambition, 
aggressiveness and ability to accomplish results; 
and second, the absence of idealism, the disposi- 
tion to work according to the traditional ethical 
standards. It does not quibble over, or even de- 
bate the rules of the game, but seeks to reach the 
goal by a display of superior enterprise, push and 
team work. It is the type which furnishes our 
great captains of industry, and which regards all 
men who criticise its methods or policy as imprac- 
tical dreamers. The other type may be called the 
stalwart, which is idealistic and inclined to question 
all existing aims and methods. It has the vision 
of a higher culture and is guided by fixed princi- 
ples. It breaks with tradition and is not dis- 
posed to compromise. 

This stalwart type was represented in the 
colonial period of America by the Puritans who 
dominated in New England and more or less in all 
of the colonies. About the middle of the eight- 
eenth century it began to give way to the pragmat- 
ic type. The general prosperity, follov/ing the 
pioneer period of hardship, tended to give the lead- 
ership to men who had accomplished material re- 
sults, and who valued success more than loyalty to 
principle or ideal. The stalwart type arose again 
triumphant during the Revolutionary period, but 
was soon thereafter superseded by the pragmatists 
who ruled supreme until the tide of the anti-slav- 
ery sentiment brought the stalwarts back into power 



220 Democracy In America 

for the period of the Civil War. Immediately fol- 
lowing the death of Lincoln, the pragmatists gained 
absolute sway over every domain of national life 
and maintained their hold almost without a strug- 
gle, no matter what political party was in powder, 
until the beginning of the twentieth century. The 
re-aw^akening of the stalwarts was represented in 
politics by the sudden and brilliant appearance in 
the presidential campaign of 1896 of that uncom- 
promising idealist, William Jennings Bryan. What- 
ever one may think of the soundness or practica- 
bility of his policies, no one can doubt that he per- 
sonified a new type of leadership, and performed a 
great service in stirring up the national conscience, 
and in converting it to a new standard. Theodore 
Roosevelt represented the actual transition from 
the pragmatic to the stalwart type. Thanks to his 
strong personality and the ripeness of the time, he 
was able to swing public sentiment around to the 
new basis. His successors, William Howard Taft, 
and Woodrow Wilson, are no less splendid stalwart 
types. The stalwart renaissance is shown conspicu- 
ously in the great temperance wave w^hich has just 
culminated in the national suppression of the liquor 
traffic, in the campaign for the abolition of child 
labor, for workingmen's compensation laws, and 
for other measures aiming to bring conditions up 
to new standards and ideals. During the long 
periods of domination of the pragmatic type, there 
was no opportunity for stalwart men of deep sym- 
pathies, broad visions, and high ideals to win pub- 
lic favor, and hence the long periods of mediocre 
leadership. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
POLITICAL LIFE— (Continued). 

THEORY OF LE BON* THAT MAJORITY OR CROWD RULE 
MEANS THE EXTINCTION OF CIVILIZATION— THE 
FALLACY OF HIS THEORY— A PEOPLE LIKE A FIRE- 
MAN MAY BE TRAINED TO ACT WITH REASON AND 
DISCIPLINE— A DEMOCRACY HAS MACHINERY FOR 
DELIBERATION— AND IS SWAYED BY MEN OF SU- 
PERIOR ABILITY— THE TREND OF DEMOCRACY IS 
TOWARDS JUSTICE ANT) GOOD FELLOWISHIP. 

There remains to notice, in connection with 
the question of leadership in a democracy, the 
views of Gustave Le Bon. He maintains that, in the 
ascent of civilization, the people are led by the 
superior few; in the descent of civilization, by the 
inferior many. He goes so far as to state that the 
rule of the majority, or the crowd, as he calls it, 
whether in a democracy or other form of govern- 
ment, inevitably means retrogression and the final 
extinction of civilization. *'Up to now," he says, 
"these thorough-going destructions of a wornout 
civilization have constituted the most obvious task 
of the masses. It is not indeed today merely that 
this can be traced. History tells us, that from the 
moment when the moral forces on which a civili- 
zation rested have lost their strength, its final dis- 
solution is brought about by those unconscious and 
brutal crowds known, justifiably enough, as bar- 

[221] 



222 Democracy In America 

barians. Civilizations as yet have only been cre- 
ated and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, 
never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for 
destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a 
barbarian phase. A civilization involves fixed rules, 
discipline, a passing from the instinctive to the 
rational state, forethought for the future, an ele- 
vated degree of culture — all of them conditions 
that crowds, left to themselves, have invariably 
shown themselves incapable of realizing. In con- 
sequence of the purely destructive nature of their 
power, crowds act like those microbes which 
hasten the dissolution of enfeebled or dead bodies. 
When the structure of a civilization is rotten, it is 
always the masses that bring about its down- 
fall."* 

The fallacy of this line of argument lies in the 
assumption that crowds necessarily act impulsively 
and without reason or discipline. A democracy, 
like any other human authority, is susceptible of 
education. It profits by experience, and may learn 
to mend the faults of yesterday with the wisdom 
of today. "In general," says Cooley, "we may say 
that the very changes which are drawing modern 
populations together into denser wholes bring also 
a discipline in organization and self-control which 
should remove them further and further from the 
mob state. 

"It is agreed by writers on the crowd that men 
are little likely to be stampeded in matters regard- 
ing which they have a trained habit of thought — 

•p. 19. 



Political Life 223 

as a fireman for instance, will be apt to keep his 
head when the fire-alarm sounds. And it is just 
the absence of this that is the mark of a crowd, 
which is not made by mere numbers and contig- 
uity, but by group excitability arising from lack of 
stable organization. A veteran army is not a crowd, 
however numerous and concentrated ; and no more 
perhaps is a veteran democracy, though it number 
twenty million voters." * * * 

"Nor is it merely in politics that this is true, 
for it is the whole tendency of a free system to 
train men to stand on their own feet and resist the 
rush. In a fixed order, with little opening for 
initiative or diflferentiated development, they scarce- 
ly realize themselves as distinct and self-directing 
individuals, and from them one may expect the 
traits of Le Bon's foules; hardly from the shrewd 
farmers and mechanics of American democracy. 

"It looks at first sight as if, because of their 
dense humanity, the great cities in which the ma- 
jority of the population are apparently to live must 
tend to a mob-like state of mind ; but, except in so 
far as cities attract the worse elements of the 
people, this is probably not the case. Mob phe- 
nomena generally come from crowd excitement en- 
suing upon a sluggish habit of life and serving as 
an outlet to the passions which such a life stores 
up. We find the mob and the mob-like religious 
revival in the back countries rather than among 
the cheerful and animated people that throng the 
open places of New York and Chicago. * * * 



224 Democracy In America 

**There is really no solid basis in fact or theory 
for the view that established democracy is the 
rule of an irresponsible crowd. If not true of Amer- 
ica, it fails as a general principle ; and no authori- 
tative observer has found it to be the case here. 
Those who hold the crowd-theory seem to be chiefly 
writers, whether French or not, who generalize 
from the history of France. Without attempting 
any discussion of this, I may suggest one or two 
points that v/e are apt to overlook. It is, for one 
thing, by no means clear that French democracy 
has shown itself to lack the power of self-control 
and deliberate progress. Its difficulties, the pres- 
ence of ancient class divisions, of inevitable mili- 
tarism, and the like — have been immeasurably 
greater than ours, and its spirit one with which we 
do not readily sympathize. France, I suppose, is 
little understood in England or the United States, 
and we probably get our views too much from a 
school of French writers whose zeal to correct her 
faults may tend to exaggerate them. The more 
notorious excesses of the French or Parisian popu- 
lace — such as are real and not a fiction of hostile 
critics — seem to have sprung from that exercise of 
power without training inevitable in a country 
where democracy had to come by revolution. And, 
again, a certain tendency to act in masses, and lack 
of vigorous local and private initiative, which ap- 
pears to characterize France, is much older than 
the Revolution, and seems due partly to race traits 
and partly to such historical conditions as the cen- 



Political Life 225 

tralized structure inherited from absolute mon- 
archy."* 

Le Bon seems to overlook the fact that a Dem- 
ocracy can develop machinery for deliberation. It 
is by virtue of this deliberate organization 
that the decisions and actions of a democracy 
rise above those of the average citizen, instead of 
falling to a lower level as Le Bon maintains. A 
democracy develops a variety of institutions for 
enlightening the people on any question at issue, 
and the people fall into the habit of consulting 
some recognized authority before arriving at a 
decision. ''Nearly every man," says Ross, ''looks 
for guidance to certain quarters, bows to the ex- 
ample of trusted leaders, of persons of influence 
and authority. Every editor, politician, banker, 
capitalist, railroad president, employer, clergyman, 
or judge has a following with whom his opinion 
has weight. He, in turn, is likely to have his 
authorities. The anatomy of collective opinion 
shows it to be organized from centres and sub- 
centres, forming a kind of intellectual feudal sys- 
tem. The average man responds to several such 
centres of influence, and when they are in accord 
on a particular question he is almost sure to ac- 
quiesce. But when his authorities disagree, there 
results either confusion or else independence of 
judgment. >i^ * * 

"The polling of people on a question when first 
it comes up brings to light much prejudice, and 
stupidity. The polling of the same persons after 

• p. 156. 



226 Democracy In America 

there has been time for free discussion and the 
maturing of a public opinion, reveals an intelligence 
and foresight far above that of the average man. 
It is, therefore, a slander to declare that manhood 
suffrage equalizes Socrates and Sambo. At its best 
estate a popular election merely records the out- 
come of a vast social deliberation in which the 
philosopher has a million times the influence of the 
field hand. This collective rumination corrects the 
ballot box falsehood that one man is as good as 
another, and brings it to pass that the decisions of 
a political democracy may be quite as intelligent 
as those of an artistocratic society, and at the same 
time free from the odious class selfishness of the 
latter."* 

If crowds do not act impulsively, nor move 
blindly without guidance from superior men, it is 
hardly necessary to say that Le Bon's theory of de- 
cadence through crowd rule has no foundation to 
rest upon. 

Whether the crowd rule makes for progress 
or decadence depends upon the criterion set up as 
a measure of progress, and on this point Le Bon is 
vague. If we accept the criterion of progress em- 
bodied in Christianity and generally finding favor 
in Western Civilization, I think there can be no 
doubt of the upward trend of modern democracies. 
According to that criterion progress consists in the 
extension of brotherhood, involving more kindly re- 
lations, more truthfulness, justice, and more self- 

*p. 351. 



1 



Political Life 227 

sacrifice and cooperation in serving the common 
welfare. 

Of the general trend of democracy, Cooley 
says: ''Everything that tends to bring mankind to- 
gether in large wholes of sympathy and under- 
standing tends to enlarge the reach of kindly feel- 
ing. Among the conditions that most evidently 
have this effect are facility of communication and 
the acceptance of common principles. These per- 
mit the contact and fusion of minds and tend to 
mould the group into a moral whole."! * * * 

''Certainly there is, on the whole, a more 
lively and hopeful pursuit of the brotherhood of 
man in modern democracy than there ever was, on 
a large scale, before. One who is not deaf to the 
voices of literature, of social agitation, of ordinary 
intercourse, can hardly doubt this. The social 
settlement and similar movements express it, and 
so, more and more, does the whole feeling of our 
society regarding richer and poorer. Philanthrophy 
is not only extending, but undergoing a revolution 
of principle from alms to justice and from con- 
descension to fellowship. The wealthy and edu- 
cated classes feel, however vaguely, that they must 
justify their advantages to their fellowmen and 
their own consciences by making some public use 
of them. Gifts — well meant if not always wise — 
to education, science and philanthropy are increas- 
ing, and there was never, perhaps, a more prev- 
alent disposition to make unusual mental acquire- 
ments available towards general culture."! * * * 

tp. 191. ttP- 195 



228 Democracy In America 

''Truth is a kind of justice, and wherever there 
is identification of oneself with the life of the group 
it is fostered, and lying tends to be felt as mean 
and impolitic. Serious falsehood among friends is, 
I believe, universally abhorred — ^by savages and 
children as well as by civilized adults. To lie to a 
friend is to hit him from behind, to trip him up in 
the dark, and so the moral sentiment of every 
group attempts to suppress falsehood among its 
members, however it may be encouraged as against 
outsiders. 'Wherefore,' says St. Paul, 'putting 
away lying, speak every man truth with his neigh- 
bor, for we are' members one of another.' 

"Our democratic system aims to be a larger 
organization of moral unity, and so far as it is so, 
in the feeling of the individual, it fosters this open 
and downright attitude toward his fellows. "tt 

* * H= 

"I will not here inquire minutely how far 
or in what sense honesty is the best policy, but it 
is safe to say that the more life is organized upon 
a basis of freedom and justice the more there is in 
the proverb. "j * * * 

"On the whole Americans may surely claim* that 
there was never before a great nation in which the 
people felt so much like a family, had so kindly 
and cheerful a sense of a common life. It is not 
only that the sentiment has a wider range ; there is 
also m.ore faith in its future, more belief that govern- 

tip. 182. J p. 184. 



Political Life 229 

ment and other institutions can be made to express 

It is perhaps not too much to hope that the 
League of Nations is the beginning of an era in the 
evolution of civilization in which the boundary 
lines of States shall no longer interpose obstacles 
to the expansion of human brotherhood, and in 
which all the peoples of the earth will manifest 
towards each other those primary virtues which 
bind together in unselfish devotion the members of 
a great family. 

And upon the dawn of this new era, may we 
reach out a sympathetic and helping hand to those 
young democracies which have been the upheaval 
of the Great War; not excepting the republics 
which have arisen from the ashes of the old Ger- 
man and Austria-Hungarian despotism ; may we 
come to realize the extent to which those peoples, 
recently in arms against us, have been the victims 
of an inherited regime under whose weight they 
were unable to extricate themselves; and may we 
rejoice with them in their emancipation and re- 
ceive them into the great family of nations with 
malice towards none and good will to all. 

tp. 196. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
POLITICAL LIFE— (Continued) 

COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCY OF MONARCHY AND DEMOC- 
RACY IN WAR— DEMOCRACY HANDICAPED BY DELAYS 
DUE TO LEGISLATIVE DEBATE AND LACK OF CON- 
CENTRATED POWER— DEMOCRATIC ARMIES LED BY 
OLD FOGIES AND MADE UP OF INFERIOR SOLDIERY- 
CHARLES W. ELIOT'S VIEW THAT DEMOCRACIES ARE 
MORE EFFICIENT THAN MONARCHIES— DE TOCQUE- 
VILLE THINKS THAT DEMOCRATIC ARMIES ALWAYS 
WEAK AT THE OUTSET SURPASS MONARCHIAL 
ARMIES IN THE LONG RUN. 

The question of the comparative efficiency of 
democracy and monarchy in war has often been 
debated, and has recently been put to the test in 
the world conflict between the highly centralized 
powers of Central Europe and the Allies, com- 
posed of governments under more or less demo- 
cratic control. 

There is much in the history of modern wars, 
and especially in the history of the recent one, to 
raise a doubt of the ability of a democracy to 
cope with a monarchy in a conflict of arms. There 
are numerous facts which seem to support the 
view that the triumph of democracies over mon- 
archies can come about only through the overpow- 
ering preponderance of the former, and not 
through superior military efficiency. 

[230] 



Political Life 231 

When we reflect upon the great successes of 
the Central armies in the recent war, such as the 
conquest of Belgium, and a large part of France, 
the immense territory taken from the Russians, 
the capture of Rumania and Servia, and the sur- 
prisingly swift and irresistible drive against the 
Italians, it would seem to argue that military effi- 
ciency belongs decidedly with the autocratic gov- 
ernments. 

The case for the autocratic governments seems 
to receive additional strength from the standpoint 
of the mistakes and failures of the Allies. For in- 
stance, the lack of cooperation v/hich [permitted 
the Central Powers to concentrate on exposed 
fronts and defeat their antagonists seriatim; the 
disastrous attack on Constantinople and in the 
Mesopotamian Valley; and lastly, the complete 
collapse of Russia under her new democratic 
regime. 

Does it not seem that of all things a democ- 
racy is least capable of efficiency in war? War, 
by its very nature, demands centralized and author- 
itative control and speedy decisions and action. In 
a democracy is there not a fatal lack of concen- 
trated authority, a too great parcelling out of re- 
sponsibility, too much delay waiting for law- 
makers to debate and decide, and an inability to 
formulate any consistent policy out of millions of 
heads all clamoring to be heard, and seeking to 
dictate what should be done and how it should be 
done? 



232 Democracy In America 

There is a fine bit of satire on a democracy at 
war in Knickerbocker's History of New York, in 
discussing the threatened invasion of New Amster- 
dam by the British. "There is no sight," says 
Knickerbocker, ''more truly interesting to a phil- 
osopher than a community where every individual 
has a voice in public affairs, where every indi- 
vidual considers himself the Atlas of the nation, 
and where every individual thinks it his duty to 
bestir himself for the good of his country; I say 
there is nothing more interesting to a philosopher 
than such a community in a sudden bustle of war. 
Such clamor of tongues — such patriotic bawling — 
such running hither and thither — everybody in a 
hurry — everybody in trouble — everybody in the 
way, and everybody interrupting his neighbor — 
who is busily employed in doing nothing! It is 
like witnessing a great fire, where the whole com- 
munity are agog — some dragging about empty en- 
gines — others scampering with full buckets and 
spilling the contents into their neighbor's boots — 
and others ringing the church bells at night, by 
way of putting out the fire. Little firemen, like 
sturdy little knights storming a breach, clambering 
up and down, scaling ladders, and bawling through 
tin trumpets, by way of directing the attack. Here 
a fellow, in his great zeal to save the property of 
the unfortunate, catches up an anonymous cham- 
ber utensil, and gallants it off with an air of as 
much self-importance as if he had rescued a pot 
of money; there another throws looking-glasses 
and china out of the window, to save them from 



Political Life 233 

the flames; whilst those who can do nothing else 
run up and down the streets, keepings up an inces- 
sant cry of Fire! Fire! Fire!" 

A characteristic of democracy which neces- 
sarily affects its military efficiency is that it is 
naturally disinclined to warfare. De Tocqueville in 
this connection says: ''The same interests, the same 
fears, the. same passions which deter democratic 
nations from revolutions, deter them also frorn 
war; the spirit of military glory and the spirit of 
revolution are weakened at the same time and by 
the same causes. The ever-increasing numbers of 
men of property — lovers of peace, the growth of 
personal wealth which war so rapidly consumes, 
the mildness of manners, the gentleness of heart, 
those tendencies to pity which are engendered by 
the equality of conditions, that coolness of under- 
standing which renders men comparatively insen- 
sible to the violent and poetical excitement of 
arms, all these causes concur to quench the mili- 
tary spirit. I think it may be admitted as a gen- 
eral and constant rule, that, amongst civilized na- 
tions, the warlike passions will become more rare 
and less intense in proportion as social conditions 
shall be more equal. War is nevertheless an occur- 
rence to which all nations are subject, democratic 
nations as well as others. Whatever taste they 
may have for peace, they must hold themselves 
in readiness to repel aggression, or in other words, 
they must have an army. 

"Fortune, which has conferred so many pecul- 
iar benefits upon the inhabitants of the United 



234 Democracy In America 

States, has placed them in the midst of a wilder- 
ness, where they have, so to speak, no neighbors; 
a few thousand soldiers are sufficient for their 
wants; but this is peculiar to America, not to democ- 
racy. The equality of conditions, and the manners 
as well as the institutions resulting from it, do not 
exempt a democratic people from the necessity 
of standing armies, and their armies always ex- 
ercise a powerful influence over their fate. It is 
therefore of singular importance to inquire what 
are the natural propensities of the men of whom 
these armies are composed. 

"Amongst aristocratic nations, especially among 
those in which birth is the only source of rank, 
the same inequality exists in the army as in the 
nation; the officer is noble, the soldier is a serf; 
the one is naturally called upon to command, the 
other to obey. In aristocratic armies, the private 
soldier's ambition is therefore circumscribed with- 
in very narrow limits. Nor has the ambition of 
the officer an unlimited range. An aristocratic 
body not only forms a part of the scale of ranks 
within itself: the members of whom it is composed 
are placed one above another, in a particular and 
unvarying manner. Thus one man is bora to the 
command of a regiment, another to that of a com- 
pany; when once they have reached the utmost 
object of their hopes, they stop of their own ac- 
cord, and remain contented with their lot. There 
is, besides, a strong cause, which, in aristocracies, 
weakens the officer's desire of promotion. Amongst 
aristocratic nations, an officer, independently of 



Political Life 235 

his rank in the army, also occupies an elevated 
rank in society ; the former is almost always in his 
eyes only an appendage to the latter. A nobleman 
who embraces the profession of arms follow^s less 
from motives of ambition than from a sense of the 
duties imposed on him by his birth. He enters 
the army in order to find an honorable employ- 
ment for the idle years of his youth, and to be 
able to bring" back to his home and his peers some 
honorable recollections of military life; but his prin- 
cipal object is not to obtain by that profession 
either property, distinction, or power, for he pos- 
sesses these advantages in his own right, and en- 
joys them without leaving his home. 

"In democratic armies all the soldiers may 
become officers, which makes the desire of pro- 
motion general, and immeasurably extends the 
bounds of military ambition. The officer, on his 
part, sees nothing which naturally and necessarily 
stops him at one grade more than at another; and 
each grade has immense importance in his eyes, 
because his rank in society almost always depends 
on his rank in the army. Amongst democratic 
nations it often happens that an officer has no 
property but his pay, and no distinction but that 
of military honors: consequently as often as his 
duties change, his fortune changes, and he be- 
comes, as it were, a new man. What was only an 
appendage to his position in aristocratic armies 
has thus become the main point, the basis of his 
whole condition. Under the old French mon- 
archy officers were always called by their titles 



236 Democracy In America 

of nobility; they are now always called by the ti- 
tle of their military rank. This little change in 
the forms of language suffices to show that a great 
revolution has taken place in the constitution of 
society and that of the army. In democratic 
armies the desire of advancement is almost uni- 
versal ; it is ardent, tenacious, perpetual ; it is 
strengthened by all other desires, and only ex- 
tinguished with life itself. But it is easy to see, 
that of all the armies in the world, those in which 
advancement must be slowest in times of peace 
are the armies of democratic countries. As the 
number of commissions is naturally limited, whilst 
the number of competitiors is almost unlimited, 
and as the strict law of equality is over all alike, 
none can make rapid progress — many can m.ake 
no progress at all. Thus the desire of advance- 
ment is greater, and the opportunities of advance- 
ment fewer, there than elsewhere. All the am- 
bitious spirits of a democratic army are conse- 
quently ardently desirous of war, because war 
makes vacancies, and warrants the violation of 
that law of seniority which is the sole privilege 
natural to democracy. 

''We thus arrive at this singular consequence, 
that of all armies those most ardently desirous of 
war are democratic armies, and of all nations 
those most fond of peace are democratic nations: 
and, what makes these facts still more extraordi- 
nary, is that these contrary effects are produced 
at the same time by the principle of equality."* 

* II, 279. 



Political Life 237 

'These opposite tendencies of the nation and 
the army expose democratic communities to great 
dangers. When a military spirit forsakes a peo- 
ple, the profession of arms immediately ceases to 
be held in honor, and militarj^ men fall to the 
lowest rank of the public servants: they are little 
esteemed, and no longer understood. The re- 
verse of what takes place in aristocratic ages then 
occurs; the men who enter the army are no longer 
those of the highest, but of the lowest rank. Mil- 
itary ambition is only indulged in when no other 
is possible. Hence arises a circle of cause and 
consequence from which it is difficult to escape: 
the best part of the nation shuns the military 
profession because that profession is not honored, 
and the profession is not honored because the best 
part of the nation has ceased to follow it. It is 
then no matter of surprise that democratic armies 
are often restless, illtempered. and dissatisfied with 
their lot, although their physical condition is com- 
monly far better, and their discipline less strict 
than in other countries. The soldier feels that 
he occupies an inferior position, and his wounded 
pride either stimulates his tastes for hostilities 
which would render his services necessary, or 
gives him a turn for revolutions, during which he 
may hope to win by force of arms the political 
influence and personal importance now denied him. 
The composition of democratic armies makes this 
last-mentioned danger much to be feared. In 
democratic communities almost every man has 
some property t» preserve ; but democratic armies 



238 Democracy In America 

are generally led by men without property, most 
of whom have little to lose in civil broils. The 
bulk of the nation is naturally much more afraid 
of revolutions than in the ages of aristocracy, but 
the leaders of the army much less so. 

''Moreover, as among democratic nations (to 
repeat what I have just remarked) the wealthiest, 
the best educated, and the most able men seldom 
adopt the military profession; the army, taken 
collectively, eventually forms a small nation by 
itself, where the mind is less enlarged, and habits 
are more rude than in the nation at large. Now, 
this small uncivilized nation has arms in its pos- 
session, and alone knows how to use them.: for, 
indeed, the pacific temper of the community in- 
creases the danger to which a democratic people 
is exposed from the military and turbulent spirit 
of the army. Nothing is so dangerous as an army 
amidst an unwarlike nation ; the excessive love of 
the whole community for quiet continually puts its 
constitution at the mercy of the soldiery. 

''It may therefore be asserted, generally 
speaking, that if democratic nations are naturally 
prone to peace from their interests and their pro- 
pensities, they are constantly drawn to war and 
revolutions by their armies. Military revolutions, 
which are scarcely ever to be apprehended in 
aristocracies, are always to be dreaded amongst 
democratic nations. These perils must be reck- 
oned amongst the most formidable which beset 
their future fate, and the attention of statesmen 



Political Life 239 

should be sedulously applied to find a remedy for 
the evil."t * * * 

''No protracted war can fail to endanger the 
freedom of a democratic country. Not indeed 
that after every victory it is to be apprehended 
that the victorious generals will possess themselves 
by force of the supreme power, after the manner 
of Sulla and Caesar: the danger is of another 
kind. War does not always give over democratic 
communities to military government, but it must 
invariably and immeasurably increase the powers 
of civil government; it must almost compulsorily 
concentrate the direction of all men and the man- 
agement of all things in the hands of the adminis- 
tration. If it lead not to despotism by sudden 
violence, it prepares men for it more gently by 
their habits. All those who seek to destroy the 
liberties of a democratic nation ought to know 
that war is the surest and the shortest means to 
accomplish it. This is the first axiom of the 
science. "tt * * * 

"I am of opinion that a restless and turbulent 
spirit is an evil inherent in the very constitution 
of democratic (armies, and beyond hope of cure. 
The legislators of democracies must not expect to 
devise any military organization capable by its in- 
fluence of calming and restraining the military 
profession; their efforts would exhaust their pow- 
ers, before the object is attained/'J * * * 

ill, 281. ttll. 282. tU. 283. 



240 Democracy In America 

''After all, and in spite of all precautions, a 
large army amidst a democratic people will al- 
ways be a source of great danger; the most ef- 
fectual means of diminishing that danger would be 
to reduce the army, but this is a remedy which all 
nations have it not in their power to use."r <= * * 

''Any army is in danger of being conquered 
at the outset of a campaign, after a long peace; 
any army which has long been engaged in war- 
fare has strong chances of victory; this truth is 
peculiarly applicable to democratic armies. In 
aristocracies the military profession, being a privi- 
leged career, is held in honor even in time of 
peace. Men of great talents, great attainments, 
and great ambition embrace it; the army is in 
all respects on a level with the nation, and fre- 
quently above it. We have seen, on the con- 
trary, that amongst a democratic people the 
choicer minds of the nation are gradually drawn 
away from the military profession, to seek by oth- 
er paths distinction, power, and especially wealth. 
After a long peace — and in democratic ages the 
periods of peace are long — the army is always in- 
ferior to the country itself. In this state it is 
called into active service; and until war has alter- 
ed it, there is danger for the country as well as for 
the army. 

"I have shown that in democratic armies, and 
in time of peace, the rule of seniority is the su- 
preme and inflexible law of advancement. This is 

ill, 283. 



PoiJTiCAL Life 241 

not only a consequence, as I have before observed, 
of the constitution of these armies, but of the con- 
stitution of the people, and it will always occur. 
Again, as amongst these nations the officer derives 
his position in the country solely from his position 
in the army, and as he draws all the distinction 
and competency he enjoys from the same source, 
he does not retire from his profession, or is not 
superannuated, till towards the extreme close of 
life. The consequence of these two causes is, 
that when a democratic people goes to war, after 
a long interval of peace, all the leading officers 
of the army are old men. I speak not only of 
the generals, but of the non-commissioned officers, 
who have most of them been stationary, or have 
only advanced step by step. It may be remarked 
with surprise, that in a democratic army after a 
long peace all the soldiers are mere boys, and all 
the superior officers in declining years; so that the 
former are wanting in experience, the latter in 
vigor. This is a strong element of defeat, for 
the first condition of successful generalship is 
youth: I should not have ventured to say so if 
the greatest captain of modern times had not made 
ihe observation."* 

Before we can answer the question of the 
comparative efficiency of democracy and mon- 
archy in war, we must first answer the question of 
the comparative efficiency of the two forms of 
government in respect to industry, science, art, 
and all other peaceful pursuits. This question 

*II, 289. 



242 Democracy In America 

has been answered for us by Charles W. Eliot. 
Discussing the comparative efficiency of autocratic 
and free governments, he says: ''Going back to the 
late years of the eighteenth century, we find that 
propulsion by steam on land and water was first 
made commercially successful by Englishmen and 
Americans and that English and French chemists 
made the fundamental discoveries in chemical 
theory. In the early part of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the development of the factory system with 
steam-driven machinery was an English achieve- 
ment, and later an American. As we come fur- 
ther on in the nineteenth century, we find that it 
was Americans who developed the telegraph and 
telephone as industrial implements, and thereby 
changed in large measure the habits of industrial 
commercial, and financial life, and in many re- 
spects of domestic and family life also. It was 
an Italian who invented and introduced in prac- 
tice wireless telegraphy, — a delightful instance of 
the transmission of a genius for physics in the 
same nation through centuries. It was Americans 
who invented and made commercially practical 
the electric light and the wide diffusion of me- 
chanical power by electricity. The explosive en- 
gine was developed as an industrial agent in 
France; and the gasoline motor and the automo- 
bile have been French, English, and American 
developments. The aeroplane heavier than air 
was invented by Professor Langley, when Secretary 
of the Smithsonian Institution, and was developed 
for practical use by two other Americans — the 



1 



Political Life 243 

brothers Wright. The cotton gin, on vrhich the 
whole cotton industry is founded, was the inven- 
tion of an American, as were also the sewing ma- 
chine, the typewriter, and all sorts of shoe-ma- 
chinery. So was the job printing-press with the 
type held, not on a horizontal plane, but at any 
convenient angle with the paper to be printed — 
an invention out of which came the rotary press, 
which is today an indispensable instrument for 
the quick and wide circulation of news. It was 
America that built the first monitor and the first 
submarine; and it was England that built the 
first dreadnaught. 

''Turning to a totally different field of dis- 
covery, anaesthesia was an American invention; 
and its wide usefulness was first demonstrated in 
an American hospital. Asepsis, a discovery of 
equal value, was introduced by Lister, a British 
subject. Another Englishman invented and brought 
into use inoculation against typhoid fever. It was 
American surgeons and members of the Army 
Medical Corps, temporarily serving in Cuba, who 
showed the world how to prevent the spread of 
yellow fever. 

''The immense world-wide rubber industry is 
based on the invention of the American, Goodyear, 
who discovered that the mixture of sulphur and 
rubber produced an elastic, waterproof material, 
capable of innumerable applications for which 
pure rubber was not fit. 

"The great inventions in business organiza- 
tion have, of course, proceeded from the freer 



244 Democracy In America 

countries, and not from those despotically gov- 
erned, — such, for example, as the organization of 
ocean liners running to all parts of the world, 
which is in the main an English invention. The 
organization of the great business of taking pe- 
troleum out of the earth, piping the oil over great 
distances, distilling and refining it, and distribut- 
ing it in tank steamers, tank wagons, and cans all 
over the earth, was an American invention. The 
conception of the huge and complex organization 
of the United Steel Corporation, and the putting of 
that conception into practice, is another American 
achievement of great significance. The invention 
of the corporation with limited liability, which has 
led to an immense development of industrial and 
commercial productiveness, is English and Ameri- 
can ; and this management of industries by cor- 
porations set up in free governments has, in turn, 
become a great reinforcement of free institutions. 

^'Obviously, we are not tracing the results of 
blind chance, or of any sort of coincidence or acci- 
dent. We are recognizing the legitimate fruits of lib- 
erty. It is, of course, true that Germany has adopted, 
adapted, and used with great skill all the invent- 
tions that have been mentioned, and especially in 
organizing and using her army and navy. She 
has also used them all in the remarkable develop- 
ment of her industries during the past fifty years; 
but she invented and brought into use none of 
them, nor did Russia, Austria, or Turkey. Most 
of the inventions mentioned are indispensable to 
the carrying on of the present war in Europe; and 



Political Life 245 

many of them were indispensable to the prepara- 
tions for that war, carried on through long years 
before; but all of them, except the distinctly naval 
inventions, were made for peaceful uses — to pro- 
mote the industrial prod'.ictiveness and the well- 
being of the human race. * * * 

"The facts of the case are unquestionable. 
The explanation of them is, — ^that under free 
governments, and in communities which have a 
fair amount of social mobility, the rare men are 
surer to com.e forward into vigorous action, — ^the 
men who are competent, not only to invent or 
imagine the thing or the method that is next 
wanted, but to put their inventions into practical 
form, and to make them useful in the actual in- 
dustries of their nations and the world. Among a 
free people the remarkable human specimen is 
more likely to get his most complete and pov/erful 
development than among a p^^^ple subject to an 
autocratic government. 

'*We may reasonably believe, therefore, that 
there is a power in free institutions which leads 
straight to efficiency in the industries of the coun- 
try, and, in the long run and after many experi- 
ments and failures, to the efficient management 
of its governmental concerns, and that this effi- 
ciency can be brought to a higher condition in a 
republic or a constitutional monarchy than in any 
despotic or autocratic government. 

"There is another field of hum.an activity, — 
the development of great pioneers in thinking and 
imagining, — in which the Germans are accustomed 



I 



246 Democracy In America 

to claim the leadership, but that claim is without 
warrant. In the first place, German literature 
and philosophy are, like German industrial devel- 
opment, comparatively young. That they should 
become preeminent so soon is not to be expected. 
In the next place, the German race has not yet 
developed leaders of thought in literature, phil- 
osophy, poetry, and statesmanship who can bear 
comparison with the supreme personages in Eng- 
land, France, and Italy. Germany has produced 
no men who can be placed beside Dante, Michael 
Angelo, and Cavour in Italy; Shakespeare, Milton, 
Newton, Faraday, and Darwin in England, or Pas- 
teur in France. And as to America, it seems to 
a native American profane to mention Bismarck 
and the present German Em.peror in the same 
breath with Washington and Lincoln."* 

If it is true that democracies achieve greater 
efficiency in the peaceful pursuits, there is reason 
to believe that they may achieve greater efficiency 
also in war. Following this line of thought Do 
Tocqueville says: **I am therefore of opinion that, 
v/hen a democratic people engages in a war after 
a long peace, it incurs much more risk of defeat 
than any other nation : but it ought not easily to 
be cast down by its reverses, for the chances of 
success for such an army are increased by the du- 
ration of the war. When a war has at length, by 
its long continuance, roused the whole community 
from their peaceful occupations and ruined their 
minor undertakings, the same passions which made 

* "NationaJ Efficiency Best Developed under Free Governments," Atlantic 
Monthly. April, 1915. 



Political Life 247 

them attach so much importance to the mainte- 
nance of peace will be turned to arms. War, after 
it has destroyed all modes of speculation, becomes 
itself the great and sole speculation, to which all 
the ardent and ambitious desires which equality 
engenders are exclusively directed. Hence it is 
that the selfsame democratic nations which are so 
reluctant to engage in hostilities, sometimes per- 
form prodigious achievements when once they 
have taken the field. As the war attracts more 
and more of public attention, and is seen to create 
high reputations and great fortunes in a short 
space of time, the choicest spirits of the nation 
enter the military profession ; all the enterprising, 
proud, and martial minds, no longer of the aris- 
tocracy solely, but of the whole country, are 
drawn in this direction. As the number of com- 
petitors for military honors is immense, and war 
drives every man to his proper level, great gen- 
erals are always sure to spring up. A long war 
produces upon a democratic army the same effects 
that a revolution produces upon a people ; it breaks 
through the regulations, and allows extraordinary 
men to rise above the common level. Tho^^e offi- 
cers v/hose bodies and minds have grown old in 
peace, are removed, or superannuated, or they 
die. In their stead a host of young men are press- 
ing on, whose frames are already hardened, whose 
desires are extended and inflamed by active ser- 
vice. They are bent on advancement at all haz- 
ards, and perpetual advancement; they are fol- 
lowed by others with the same passions and de- 



248 Democracy In America 

sires, and after these are others yet unlimited by 
aught but the size of the army. The principle of 
equality opens the door of ambition to all, and 
death provides chances for ambition. Death is 
constantly thinning the ranks, making vacancies, 
closing and opening the career of arms. 

''There is moreover a secret connection be- 
tween the military character and the character of 
democracies, which war brings to light. The men 
of democracies are naturally passionately eager to 
acquire what they covet, and to enjoy it on easy 
conditions. They for the most part w^orship 
chance, and are much less afraid of death than of 
difficulty. This is the spirit which they bring to 
commerce and manufactures; and this same spirit, 
carried with them to the field of battle, induces 
them willingly to expose their lives in order to 
secure in a mom.ent the rewards of victory. No 
kind of greatness is more pleasing to the imagi- 
nation of a democratic people than military great- 
ness — a greatness of vivid and sudden lustre, ob- 
tained without toil, by nothing but the risk of life. 
Thus, whilst the interests and the tastes of the 
members of a democratic community divert them 
from war, their habits of mind fit them for carrying 
on war well; they soon make good soldiers, when 
they are aroused from their business and their en- 
joyments. If peace is peculiarly hurtful to demo- 
cratic armies, v/ar secures to them advantages 
which no other armies ever possess; and these ad-, 
vantages, however little felt at first, cannot fail in 
the end to give them the victory. An aristocratic 



Political Life 249 

nation, which in a contest with a democratic peo- 
ple, does not succeed in ruining the latter at the 
outset of the war, always runs a great risk of be- 
ing conquered by it." * 

The spread of democracy, De Tocqueville 
thinks, brings about a radical change in the char- 
acter of warfare. He says: ''When the principle 
of equality is in growth, not only amongst a single 
nation, but amongst several neighboring nations 
at the same time, as is now the case in Europe, 
the inhabitants of these different countries, not- 
withstanding the dissimiliarity of language, of 
customs and of laws, nevertheless resemble each 
other in their equal dread of war and their com- 
mon love of peace. It is in vain that ambition or 
anger puts arms in the hands of princes; they are 
appeased in spite of themselves by a species of 
general apathy and goodwill, which makes the 
sword drop from their grasp, and wars become 
more rare. As the spread of equality, taking 
place in several countries at once, simultaneously 
impels their various inhabitants to follow manu- 
factures and commerce, not only do their tastes 
grow alike, but their interests are so mixed and 
entangled with one another that no nation can 
inflict evils on other nations without those evils 
falling back upon itself; and all nations ultimately 
regard war as a calamity, almost as severe to the 
conquerer as to the conquered. Thus, on the one 
hand, it is extremely difficult in democratic ages 
to draw nations into hostilities; but on the other 

* II, 292. 



250 Democracy In America 

hand, it is almost impossible that any two of them 
should go to war without embroiling the rest. The 
interests of all are so interlaced, their opinions and 
their wants so much alike, that none can remain 
quiet when the others stir. War therefore be- 
comes more rare, but when they break out they 
spread over a larger field. Neighboring democratic 
nations not only become alike in some respects, but 
they eventually grow to resemble each other in al- 
most all. This similitude of nations has conse- 
quences of great importance in relation to war. 

"If I inquire why it is that the Helvetic Con- 
federacy made the greatest and most powerful 
nations of Europe tremble in the fifteenth century, 
whilst at the present day the power of that coun- 
try is exactly proportioned to its population, I 
perceive that the Swiss are become like all the 
surrounding communities, and those surrounding 
communities like the Swiss: so that as numerical 
strength now forms the only difference between 
them, victory necessarily attends the largest army. 
Thus one of the consequences of the democratic 
revolution which is going on in Europe is to make 
numerical strength preponderate on all fields of 
battle, and to constrain all small nations to incor- 
porate themselves with large States, or at least to 
adopt the policy of the latter. As numbers are 
the determining cause of victory, each people 
ought of course to strive by all means in its power 
to bring the greatest possible number of men into 
the field. When it was possible to enlist a kind 
of troops superior to all others, such as the Swiss 



Political Life 251 

infantry or che French horse of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, it was not thought necessary to raise very 
large armies; but the case is altered when one 
soldier is as efficient as another. "'^ 

The course and outcome of the recent World 
War seem to have fully borne out all of the con- 
tentions of De Tocqueville in regard to the effi- 
ciency of democratic armies. At the outset of the 
war the democratic armies were in danger of 
overwhelming defeat because of their lack of pre- 
paredness in men and equipment. They were 
slow in mobilizing and ill-commanded. They 
blundered and muddled throughout the first stages 
of the contest. But when sufficient time elapsed 
for them to organize, assemble their resources, and 
avail themselves of expert service, they showed 
a marked superiority in inventing new weapons, 
new devices of defense, and in adapting warfare 
to new conditions. In the whole history of the 
war German ingenuity seemed to exhaust itself in 
the utilization of gas, in the construction of an 
enormous cannon which could demolish the strong- 
est modern fort, and in the invention of a long 
range gun which could shell Paris from a distance 
of seventy miles. The Austrians and Turks made 
no innovations whatever in the art of war. The 
French early developed the defensive trench, 
which was more resistant than any fort, and the 
defensive gas-mask. The British showed wonder- 
ful ingenuity in devising destroyers and death 
traps for submarines, in weapons of defense against 

* II. 296. 



252 Democracy In America 

aircraft and in the invention of the celebrated 
tank. Both the English and French developed 
superior movable big guns. And it was French 
and British generalship which first developed the 
technique, and demonstrated the possibility, of a 
successful general attack against a trench defense. 
And finally, it was the superior generalship of the 
democratic armies which led to the overwhelming 
defeat of the Central Powers in Palestine, in Bul- 
garia, in France, and in Italy. The United States 
at the outset had only the nucleus of an army and 
no ships to transport it, no guns, munitions, or 
clothing for soldiers. Yet in an incredibly short 
time two million men were trained and on the bat- 
tle line, and guns, m.unitions and ships were being 
turned out in amazing quantities. The one great 
failure in our efficiency was the tardy and inade- 
quate production of aircraft. The governmental 
board in charge of this production, however, has 
to its credit the development of a motor which is 
considered superior to that of any other. It is not 
at all thinkable that the autocratic governments, 
under circumstances of like unpreparedness, could 
have developed a fighting organization with the 
same speed and eflPiciency that were achieved 
by the democratic governments. 

Still another reason for believing that demo- 
cratic nations prove more efficient in war is found 
in the study of biological evolution. The develop- 
ment of animal life upon the earth shows that 
those species which evolved the greatest offensive 
and defensive weapons have all perished in com- 



Political Life 253 

petition with those having acquired greater intel- 
ligence, inventiveness, and aptitude for coopera- 
tion. In a similar way the nations which have 
spent their strength in developing military power 
have gone down in competition with those which 
developed efficiency in the arts of peace. The 
Scripture seems, therefore, to utter a biological 
truth in the statement that he that taketh up the 
sword shall perish by the sword. 

In the recent conflict the autocratic govern- 
ments were weakest in the most essential element 
of national efficiency, i.e. in their powder of co- 
operating with other nations. The autocratic 
philosophy, and the efficiency built upon it, were 
remarkably selfish, and very repellant to other 
nations. Germany especially assumed a superior- 
ity, to all other nationalities, and exhibited a degree 
of vanity and arrogance of which history furnishes 
no like example. Whatever appeared to extend 
the domination of Germany in the world was con- 
sidered by them as morally right. The moral 
sense of the Germans could be offended by no 
violation of pledges or act of barbarity which 
might enable them — the self-styled fittest to sur- 
vive or supermen — to overcomxe any other race. 

A counterpart of this philosophy is found in 
that of the private individual who considers him- 
self all-important, and disdains to reflect upon the 
interest of any one else. Such an one may de- 
velop a remarkable efficiency in elbowing his way 
through life, in treading upon tender feet, and in 
scheming to grasp what belongs by right to an- 



254 Democracy In America 

other. But our penitentiaries and reformatories 
are full of men of this type of efficiency. 

The really efficient individual is one who 
squares his interest with that of his fellowmen, 
and claims for himself no right which he does not 
accord to others. His attitude towards others is 
that of friendliness and willing sen/ice. As a con- 
sequence of his enlightened philosophy and his 
wide sympathy he has an extensive circle of 
friends, and a cooperative ability which gives 
him a power and influence which he could never 
attain through any selfish policy. 

And the same criterion of efficiency holds for 
the nation. A nation whose creed and practice 
are selfish can never become as efficient as a na- 
tion which is altruistic. Germany has produced 
no social philosophers, announcing the rights of 
humanity, such as Comte, Rousseau and a host of 
other men of France ; Spencer, Carlyle, and Rus- 
kin in England; Jefferson, Lincoln and Wilson in 
America, or Garibaldi and Mazzini in Italy. It is 
not at all surprising that Germany has developed 
no sociological literature, and has not even intro- 
duced the study of social science in her universities. 
Having no social gospel for mankind, Germany 
had no friends among the nations of the world, 
except the Austrians and the Turks. 



CHAPTER XV. 
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 

THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF A DEMOCRACY IS MORE 
IMPORTANT THAN ITS POLITICAL ORGANIZATION- 
EXTRAORDINARY DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL ORGANI- 
ZATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES— THE PROPER 
UTILIZATION OF LIBERTY AND THE CHARACTER OF 
CIVILIZAION DEPENT) UPON VOLUNTARY ASSOCIA- 
TIONS—EGOISTIC, ALTRUISTIC, AND NEGATIVE 
CLASSES IN THE UNITED STATES— THE DOMINATION 
OF THE ALTRUISIC CLASS IS POSSIBLE ONI^Y 
THROUGH ORGANIZED EFFORT. 

The constitution, laws, and political institu- 
tions of a democracy are no doubt of very great im- 
portance, but they are altogether secondary to 
those voluntary organizations which underlie and 
vitalize the political institutions, and determine 
the character and trend of culture. People who 
have no king, princes, or ruling class to govern 
them are obliged to be their own parent, and to 
direct themselves through the development of 
voluntary effort. The character of a democracy 
is to be judged much more by the number and 
effectiveness of its voluntary organization? than by 
its political constitution. For instance, the consti- 
tution of the Negro Republic of Haiti is a most ad- 
mirable document, hardly distinguishable from 
that of the United States, but the republic has no 

[2551 



256 Democracy In America 

effective social organization, and, in fact, has never 
been anything but a military despotism. Also it 
may be said that the Russian Bolshevik constitut- 
tion contains very admirable declarations, but the 
Russian people have no social organization, and 
their government is, in fact, not a republic but a 
proletarian despotism. Eternal vigilance is the 
price of liberty, and liberty can only be kept 
within rational bounds through voluntary organi- 
zations. 

The people of the United States certainly 
lead the world in the number, variety and power 
of their social organizations. This fact was ob- 
served by De Tocqueville in 1830. He remarked 
that, 'The political associations which exist in the 
United States are only a single feature in the midst 
of the immense assemblage of associations in that 
country. Am.ericans of all ages, all conditions, 
and all dispositions, constantly form associations. 
They have not only commercial and manufactur- 
ing companies, in which all take part, but associa- 
tions of a thousand other kinds — religious, moral, 
serious, futile, extensive, or restricted, enormous 
or diminutive. The Americans make associations 
to give entertainments, to found establishments for 
education, to build inns, to construct churches, to 
diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; 
and in this manner they frimd hospitals, ^prisons, 
and schools. If it be proposed to advance some 
truth, or foster some feeling by the encouragement 
of a great example, they form a society. Wher- 
ever, at the head of some new undertaking, you 



Social Organization 257 

see the government in France, or a man of rank in 
England, in the United States you will be sure to 
find an association. I met with several kinds of 
associations in America, of which I confess I had 
no previous notion ; and I have often admired the 
extreme skill with v/hich the inhabitants of the 
United States succeed in proposing a common ob- 
ject to the exertions of a great many men, and in 
getting them, voluntarily to pursue it. I have since 
travelled over England, whence the Americans 
have taken some of their laws and many of their 
customs; and it seemed to me that the principle 
of association was by no means so constantly or so 
adroitly used in that country. The English often 
perform great things singly; whereas the Ameri- 
cans form associations for the smallest undertak- 
ings. It is evident that the former people consid- 
er association as a powerful means of action, but 
the latter seem to regard it as the only means they 
have of acting. 

'Thus the m.ost democratic country, on the 
face of the earth is that in which men have in our 
time carried to the highest perfection the art of 
pursuing in common the object of their common 
desires, and have applied this new science to the 
greatest number of purposes."! * * * 

"As soon as several of the inhabitants of the 
United States have taken up an opinion or a feel- 
ing which they wish to promote in the world, they 
look out for mutual assistance ; and as soon as they 
have found each other out, they combine. From 

t II, 115. 



258 Democracy In America 

that moment they are no longer isolated men, but 
a power seen from afar, whose actions serve for 
an example, and w^hose language is listened to. The 
first time I heard in the United States that 100,000 
men had bound themselves publicly to abstain from 
spirituous liquors, it appeared to me more like a 
joke than a serious engagement; and I did not at 
once perceive why these temperate citizens could 
not content themselves with drinking water by 
their own firesides. * * * They acted just in the 
same way as a man of high rank who should dress 
very plainly, in order to inspire the humbler orders 
with a contempt of luxury. It is probable that if 
these 100,000 men had lived in France, each of 
them would singly have memorialized the govern- 
ment to watch the public-houses all over the king- 
dom. 

"Nothing, in my opinion, is more deserving of 
our attention than the intellectual and moral as- 
sociations of America. The political and indus- 
trial associations of that country strike us forcibly; 
but the others elude our observation, or if we dis- 
cover them, we understand them imperfectly, be- 
cause we have hardly ever seen anything of the 
kind. It must, however, be acknowledged that 
they are as necessary to the American people as 
the former, and perhaps more so. In democratic 
countries the science of association is the mother 
of science; the progress of all the rest depends 
upon the progress it has made. Amongst the 
laws which rule human societies there is one which 
seems to be more precise and clear than all others. 



Social Organization 259 

If men are to remain civilized, or to become so, 
the art of associating together must grow and im- 
prove in the same ratio in which the equality of 
conditions is increased."* 

By way of indicating the extent of present- 
day social organizations in the United States, I 
submit the following list copied from the Survey 
magazine : 

American Association for Labor Legislation. 

American Association for Hospital Workers. 

American Child Hygiene Association. 

American Home Economics Association. 

American Proportional Representation League. 

American Social Hygiene Association. 

American Society for the Control of Cancer. 

Eugenics Registry (Public service for knowl- 
edge of human heredity.) 

Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
America. 

Central War-time Commission of the Churches. 

National Immigrant Aid Council of Jewish 
Women. 

Intercollegiate Socialist Society. 

National Association for the Advancement of 
Colored People. 

National Board of the Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association. 

National Child Labor Committee. 

National Child Welfare Association. 

National Committee for Mental Hygiene. 

* II, 118. 



260 Democracy In America 

National Committee for the Prevention of 
Blindness. 

National Federation of Settlements. 

National League on Urban Conditions Among 
Negroes. 

National League for Woman's Service. 

National League of Women Workers. 
** National Organization for Public Health 
Nursing/ 

National Social Workers' Exchange. 

National Travelers Aid Society. 

National Women's Trade Union League. 

Playground and Recreation Association of 
America. 

Race Betterment Foundation (Public service 
for knov/ledge of race- betterment.) 

Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled 
Men. 

Russell Sage Foundation for the Improvement 
of Living Conditions. 

Short Ballot Association. 

War Camp Com.munity Service. 

Besides these organizations there are numer- 
ous others, such as churches, fraternal orders, civic 
clubs, women's clubs, and scientific associations 
which should be added to complete the list of or- 
ganizations concerned in the social welfare of the 
people. 

The necessity and value of these organizations 
are very little understood except among the people 
who have gone through a long period of discipline 
in the use of personal liberty. Even in the United 



Social Organization 261 

States much remains to be done in the way of edu- 
cating public sentiment before these organizations 
can have the support necessary for their efficiency. 

The liberty which a democracy grants to a citi- 
zen has no value in itself. It means only the op- 
portunity to strive for something. Whether the 
people strive at all, or for what end, depends upon 
their voluntary cooperation in the formation of 
aims, and in supplying the personal service and re- 
sources necessary to realize them. Judging the 
people of the United States by the use which they 
make of their liberty, they may be divided into 
three classes. First, those who are egoistic and 
predatory. By reason of their moral perversions, 
their vicious habits and practices, they may be 
considered anti-social. Second, those who are al- 
truistic and serviceable. They are the great mass 
of normal people who assimilate the culture and 
traditions of their country, and who, so far as they 
know how, live uprightly, and contribute with 
their services and money to the promotion of the 
public good. This is the class which a democracy 
has to depend on for the life and effectiveness of 
its social organization. The third class comprises 
that very great multitude of people who are nor- 
mal in their feelings and sentiments, but narrow in 
vision, and weak in social initiative and influence. 
They are law-abiding, often faithful and efficient 
in their private affairs. They are good neighbors, 
very often devoted to the church, or other local 
community enterprise. They sympathize with ev- 
erything good, and feel indignation or disgust at 



262 Democracy In America 

everything bad, in so far as they comprehend 
either. But they do nothing to promote good or 
to combat evil outside of their narrow circle. Their 
chief fault is a lack of civic education resulting in 
an absence of a sense of social responsibility. They 
are socially a negative factor in our democracy, 
and, constituting a great majority of the people, 
they permit the egoistic and predatory class, which 
is a small minority, to dominate and exploit the 
public. From the standpoint of the teachings of 
Christ, they are morally worse than the egoistic 
class, whose unsocial acts are often due to bad 
heredity or bad environment for which they are not 
responsible. In speaking of the final judgment, 
and the separation of the sheep from the goats, it is 
to be remembered that the persons adjudged to be 
bad and to suffer eternal condemnation were not 
those who had committed evil deeds, but those 
who, having had the opportunity, failed to accept 
their social obligation of rendering service to the 
poor, the afflicted and the wayward. 

The history of the development of the western 
part of the United States furnishes innumerable 
illustrations of the respective influence of the three 
classes of people above defined. The egoistic and 
predatory class at first predominate in the new 
settlement, but, with the growth of the community, 
this class soon becomes a small minority, the great 
mass of people being morally of a sturdy type but 
negative and uninfluential. The result has been 
the persistence of all the vices and grossness of 



Social Organization 263 

the first type long after it has been reduced to a 
small fraction of the population. 

In every community the predatory class, by 
reason of its inferiority in numbers, and its com- 
mon interest in manipulating politics, is always 
strongly organized; whereas the respectable class 
of people are impotent because of the torpidness 
of their civic conscience, and the difficulty of arous- 
ing them to the importance of organized effort. 

Sir Lepel Griffin very truthfully says that, 
"In all communities, and certainly in America, the 
honest and respectable largely outnumber the dis- 
reputable and disorderly. Yet the greatest catas- 
trophes in republics have been due to the coward- 
ice and apathy of the former when opposed by the 
organization and audacity of the latter." * 

The salvation of a democracy depends upon 
the elimination of its negative type of citizenship. 
It is not enough that people, individually, have 
private virtues and exalted ideals; they must be- 
come organized before they can be positive factors 
in the determination of the nation's culture. 

Every citizen in a democracy should be a 
positive factor, not only in his neighborhood, but 
in his State and in the nation; and he can become 
such only by allying himself with several of the in- 
numerable organizations whose object and scope 
comprehend the effecting of reform, or the dissemi- 
nation of culture, within the political units of the 
nation. Through the instrumentality of organiza- 
tion, it is possible for every citizen to extend his 

*p. 120. 



264 Democracy In America 

influence to the utmost limits of his country, and to 
every movement which vitally affects the interests 
of the people. No citizen should consider himself 
a positive factor m a democracy unless he contrib- 
utes v^ith his money and personal service to the 
maintenance of some half-dozen social organiza- 
tions. The proper direction of personal liberty, 
and the upward trend of civilization in a democ- 
racy, can only be accomplished through its volun- 
tary social organizations. To these organizations, 
more than to anything else, is to be assigned the 
credit for whatever merit belongs to the democracy 
of the United States. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

THE TYRANNY OF EARLY RELIGION IN AMERICA— ITS 
MELANCHOLY AND REPRESSIVE TENDENCY— CHANGE 
IN THE CHARACTER OF RELIGION IN THE EIGH- 
TEENTH CENTURY— CAMP MEETING REVIVALS- 
LEADERSHIP PASSES FROM THEOTX>GIANS TO MEN 
OF SECULAR AFFAIRS— SPECIAL IMPORTANCE OF RE- 
LIGION IN A DEMOCRACY— STRENGTH OF RELIGION 
IN THE UNITED STATES— THE REASONS FOR FANAT- 
ICAL SECTS. 

The pioneer colonists of America were a 
people who emerged from the middle and lower 
classes of Great Britain and Continental Europe. 
They represented that part of the population which 
had been least affected by the demoralizing influ- 
ences of the Renaissance. They were deeply re- 
ligious, and retained much of the gloom and melan- 
choly which harked back to the Middle Ages. 
Their religion was characterized by great fear of 
God, and by a conception of Him as a despotic 
ruler whose capriciousness and arbitrariness robbed 
His creatures of all responsibility except that of 
absolute submission to His decrees. Fortunes and 
misfortunes, calamities, diseases, and deaths were 
the visitations of God for which the individual felt 
little or no responsibility. The ideal man was one 
of a feminine and submissive type. The great terror 
with which they viewed God naturally led to great 

[2651 



266 Democracy In America 

strictness in conforming to their religious and moral 
code. Obedience to the forms of religion was en- 
forced by law. Attendance upon church services 
was compulsory. In Boston people were not al- 
lowed to sit on the Common on Sunday, or walk 
the streets except to church. All amusements were 
tabooed. Children lived under the most despotic 
regime in the home and in the school. They were 
required to sit immovable while being tortured 
over the spelling-book and the Catechism. Religion, 
for the young and the old, was an institution for 
repressing human nature. Happiness was thought 
to consist in pious meditation, and not at all in ro- 
bust action. 

Early in the eighteenth century the character 
of religion in America began to undergo a change. 
As men succeeded in subduing the forests and in 
making better provision against the rigors of na- 
ture, they became less given to religious introspec- 
tion, and more absorbed in the conquest of the ex- 
ternal world. They came to feel a livelier sense of 
the responsibilities of man, and less inclined to 
submit to the fatalities of an arbitrary God. They 
contemplated God with less terror and with more 
courage and assurance. They began to believe in 
the perfectibility of the individual and of society. 

Following this change of view-point, the Puri- 
tans of New England and elsewhere began to under- 
go relaxation and adjustment to the new conditions. 
Leadership passed from the theologians to men of 
letters, to editors, lawyers, and business men. The 
consciousness of a personal responsibility, and of 



Religious Life 267 

the possibility of general reformation, gave rise to 
a great enthusiasm for evangelization. Revivals, 
especially among the newer sects, became very 
popular throughout the colonies, and were carried 
on with an extraordinary frenzy and fanaticism. 
They raged for a century, and still survive with 
diminishing fury in the backwoods. Describing one 
of these revivals at a camp meeting, in the wilds 
of Indiana, in 1827, Mrs. Trollope says: 
"At midnight a horn sounded through the 
camp — which, we were told, was to call the people 
from private to public worship ; and we presently 
saw them flocking from all sides to the front of the 
preachers' stand. Mrs. B. and I contrived to place 
ourselves with our backs supported against the 
lower part of this structure, and we were thus en- 
abled to witness the scene which followed, without 
personal danger. There were about two thousand 
persons assembled. 

''One of the preachers began in a low nasal 
tone, and, like all other Methodist preachers, as- 
sured us of the enormous depravity of man as he 
comes from the hand of his Maker, and of his per- 
fect sanctification after he had wrestled sufficiently 
with the Lord to get hold of him, et cetera. The 
admiration of the crowd was evinced by almost 
constant cries of 'Amen! Amen!' 'Jesus! Jesus!' 
'Glory! Glory!' and the like. But this comparative 
tranquility did not last long; the preacher told 
them that this night was the time fixed upon for 
anxious sinners to wrestle with the Lord; that he 
and his brethren were at hand to help them, and 



268 Democracy In America 

that such as needed their help were to come for- 
ward into 'the pen.' The phrase forcibly re- 
called Milton's lines — 

Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 

A sheep-hook, or have learned ought else, the least 
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs! 

But when they list their lean and flashy songs, 
Grate on their scrannel oipes of wretched straw ; 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed ! 
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 

Rot inwardly — and foul contagion spread. 

'The crowd fell back at the mention of the 
pen, and for some minutes there was a vacant space 
before us. The preachers came down from their 
stand and placed themselves in the midst of us, 
beginning to sing a hymn, calling upon the peni- 
tents to come forth. As they sang they kept turn- 
ing themselves round to every part of the crowd, 
and, by degrees, the voices of the whole multitude 
joined in the chorus. This was the only moment 
at which I perceived anything like the solemn and 
beautiful effect which I had heard ascribed to this 
woodland worship. It is certain that the combined 
voices of such a multitude, heard at dead of night, 
from the depths of their eternal forests, the many 
fair young faces turned upward, and looking paler 
and lovelier as they met the moon-beams, the dark 
figures of the officials in the middle of the circle, 
the lurid glare thrown by the altar-fires on the 
woods beyond, did altogether produce a fine and 
solemn effect, that I shall not easily forget; but 
ere I had well enjoyed it, the scene changed, and 
sublimity gave place to horror and disgust. 



I 



Religious Life 269 

"The exhortation nearly resembled that which 
I had heard at *the revival/ but the result was very 
different; for, instead of the few hysterical women 
who had distinguished themselves on that occasion, 
above a hundred persons, nearly all females, came 
forward, uttering bowlings and groans, so terrible 
that I shall never cease to shudder when I recall 
them. They appeared to drag each other forward, 
and on the word being given, 'let us pray,' they all 
fell on their knees; but this posture was soon 
changed for others that permitted greater scope 
for the convulsive movements of their limbs; and 
they were soon all lying on the ground in an inde- 
scribable confusion of heads and legs. They threw 
about their limbs with such incessant and violent 
motion, that I was every instant expecting some 
serious accident to occur. 

''But how am I to describe the sound that pro- 
ceeded from this strange mass of human beings? 
I know no words which can convey an idea of it. 
Hysterical sobbings, convulsive groans, shrieks and 
screams the most appalling, burst forth on all sides. 
I felt sick with horror. As if their hoarse and 
overstrained voices failed to make noise enough, 
they soon began to clap their hands violently. The 
scene described by Dante was before me: 

'Quivi sospiri, piaiiti, et alti guai 
Risonavan per Vaere — 
— Orrihili favelle 
Parole di dolore accenti d'ira 
Voci alti e fioche, e siimi di man con elle.' 



270 Democracy In America 

''Many of these wretched creatures were beau- 
tiful young females. The preachers moved about 
among them, at once exciting and soothing their 
agonies. I heard the muttered 'Sister! dear sister!' 
I saw the insidious lips approach the cheeks of the 
unhappy girls; I heard the murmured confessions 
of the poor victims, and I watched their tormentors, 
breathing into their ears consolations that tinged 
the pale cheek with red. Had I been a man, 1 am 
sure I should have been guilty of some rash act of 
interference ; nor do I believe that such a scene 
could have been acted in the presence of English- 
men without instant punishment being inflicted ; 
not to mention the salutary discipline of the tread- 
mill, which beyond all question, would, in England, 
have been applied to check so turbulent and so 
vicious a scene." 

Was there anything distinctly characteristic 
of a democracy in these early manifestations of 
religion in America, or anything in them signifi- 
cant for the future? Contrary as it may seem to the 
superficial observer, these questions find a decisive 
answer in the affirmative in the later trend of Amer- 
ican civilization. 

De Tocqueville, in discussing religion in 
America, remarks that religion is especially im- 
portant and desirable in a democracy. "Per- 
haps," he says, "this great utility of religions is 
still more obvious amongst nations where equality 
of conditions prevails than amongst others. It 
must be acknowledged that equality, which brings 
great benefits into the world, nevertheless suggests 



Religious Life 271 

to men (as will be shown hereafter) some very 
dangerous propensities. It tends to isolate them 
from each other, to concentrate every man's at- 
tention upon himself; and it lays open the soul to 
an inordinate love of material gratification. The 
great advantage of religion is to inspire diametri- 
cally contrary principles. There is no religion 
which does not place the object of man's desires 
above and beyond the treasures of earth, ana 
which does not naturally raise the soul to regions 
far above those of the senses. Nor is there any 
which does not impose on man some sort of dut- 
ies to his kind, and thus draws him at times from 
the contemplation of himself. This occurs in re- 
ligions the most false and dangerous. Religious 
nations are therefore naturally strong on the very 
point on which democartic nations are weak; 
which shows of what importance it is for men to 
preserve their religion as their conditions become 
more equal." | * * * ^^Despotism may gov- 
ern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is 
much more necessary in the republic which they 
(the democratic men) set forth in glowing colors 
than in the monarchy v/hich they attack; and it is 
more needed in democratic republics than in any 
others. How is it possible that society should 
escape destruction if the moral tie be not strength- 
ened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? 
And what can be done with a people which is its 
cwn master, if it be not submissive to Divinity?"* 

t I, 23. * II. 312. 



272 Democracy In America 

And, as a matter of fact, adds De Tocque- 
ville, the American people are very religious. *'In 
the United States the sovereign authority is re- 
ligious, and consequently hypocrisy must be com- 
mon, but there is no country in the whole world in 
which the Christian religion retains a greater in- 
fluence over the souls of men than in America, and 
there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of 
its conformity to human nature, than that its in- 
fluence is most powerfully felt over the most en- 
lightened and free nation of the earth. "t * * * 

''In the United States religion exercises but lit- 
tle influence upon the laws and upon the details of 
public opinion, but it directs the manners (the 
characteristics of the people) of the community, 
and by regulating domestic life it regulates the 
State.''* 

"Inutile de chercher ou d'imaginer a I'heure 
actuelle," says De Lingereux, *'un Americain ab 
solument indifferent en matiere religieuse. Cela 
friserait I'indecence, et les sceptiques y sont aussi 
austeres, aussi religieux, aussi sermonneurs — a 
leur facon — que les croyants." ** 

One of the American strongholds, according 
to Charles Wagner, "is religious faith, so profound- 
ly rooted in the American character as to deter- 
mine in some degree its distinctive aspect, stamp- 
ing it with an imprint that irreligion or material- 
ism are not able to efface, and that is visible even 

t I, 308. * I, 309. ** p. 73. 



Religious Life 273 

in the earnest and generous activity of societies 
like those of ethical culture, which hold aloof 
from all religious belief. Its influence, calm and 
deep, even makes itself felt among the indifferent 
or irreligious mass of the newly arrived, who are 
not yet grounded in the country's traditions. Even 
the superficial observances of men of habit, and 
the studied devotion of hypocrites, cannot invali- 
date this fact, which is so evident, so often veri- 
fied in the family and in society, that its reality 
is not to be questioned. America is twice reli- 
gious — by inheritance and by conviction."* 

A more recent writer, Miinsterberg, has also 
been impressed with the vitality of religion in the 
American people. "The commingling of church 
and society," he says, "is shown everyw^here. The 
church is popular, religious worship is observed in 
the hom.e, the minister is esteemed, divine wor- 
ship is well attended, the work of the church is 
generally supported, and the cause of religion is 
favored by the social community. These outlines 
may now be filled in by a few details. The 
Americans grow up with a knowledge of the 
Bible. The church, Sabbath-schooL and the home 
influences work together: a true piety rules in 
every farm-house, and whosoever supposes this to 
be in anywise hypocrisy has no notion of the ac- 
tual conditions. In miany city homes of artisans 
the occupants do not know the Bible and do not 
wish to know it; but they are in no-wise hypo- 
critical, and in the country at large religion is so 

* p. 264. 



274 Democracy In America 

firmly rooted that people are much more likely to 
make sham pretences of general enlightenment 
than of religious belief. Thus, it is mostly a mat- 
ter of course that festivals, banquets, and other 
meetings which in Germany would not call for any 
religious demonstration whatsoever, are opened 
and closed by prayer. Religious discussions are 
carried on with animation in every class of so- 
ciety, and one who travels about through the 
country finds that business and religion are the 
two great topics of conversation, v/hile after them 
comes politics. It is only among individuals who 
are religiously disposed, that such vagaries of the 
supernatural consciousness, as spiritualism, heal- 
ing by prayer, etc., could excite so much interest. 
But also normal religious questions interest an in- 
comparably large circle of people; nine hundred 
ecclesiastical newspapers and magazines are regu- 
larly published and circulated by the millions. 

"We have said, furthermore, that divine ser- 
vice is well attended, and that clergymen are high- 
ly esteemed. In the non-political life, especially 
in the East, the great preachers are among the most 
influential people of the day. The most brilliant 
ecclesiastic of recent decades was, by comm.on 
consent, Phillips Brooks, by whose speech and 
personality every one was attracted and ennobled; 
and it has often been said that at his death, a few 
years ago, the country mourned as never before 
since the death of Lincoln. No one equal to him 
has appeared since, but there are many ministers 
whose stoical influence must be accounted among 



Religious Life 275 

the great factors of public life: and this is true, 
not only of the Protestant ministers, but also of 
several Catholic ecclesiastics. 

*The same is true of more modest comm.uni- 
ties. The influence of the preacher is more pro- 
found in small communities of America than it is 
in Germany. But it is weakened at once if the 
representative of the church descends to politics. 
He is welcomed as an appropriate fellow-worker 
only in questions that border both on politics and 
on morals — as, for instance, the temperance ques- 
tion. The high position of the clergy is interest- 
ingly shown from the fact that the profession is 
very often recruited from the best classes of so- 
ciety. Owing to the American effort to obliterate [ 
social differentiation as much as possible, it is dif- I 
ficult to make sure of the facts of the situation; 
but it seems pretty certain that the men who study 
for the ministry, especially in the Episcopalian, 
Presbyterian, Congregational, and Unitarian 
churches, are better born than the men who be- 
come school teachers and physicians. 

"The preacher steps into his pulpit and faces 
his hearers in a way which is typically American. 
Of course, it is impossible to reduce the minister- 
ial bearing in the 194,000 churches of the country 
to a single formula ; but one thing may always be 
noted, by the European, in contrast to what he 
has seen at home — the obvious reference of the 
sermon to the worldly interests of the congrega- 
tion. Its outer form already shows this; the sim- 
ilies and metaphors are borrowed from ordinary 



276 Democracy In America 

and even vulgar life, and applications are often 
trivial, but forcible and striking, and even anec- 
dotes are introduced and given in colloquial form. 
More than that, the topic itself is chosen so as to 
concern personally nearly every one sitting in the 
pews; the latest vexation or disappointment, forms 
the starting-point of the sermon, and the w^ords 
of the Bible are brought home to the needs of the 
hearers like an expected guest. The preacher 
does not try to lure the soul av^ay from daily life, 
but he tries to bring something higher into that 
life and there to make it living; and if he is the 
right sort of preacher, this never v^orks as a cheap- 
ening of what is divine, but as an exaltation of 
what is human. 

''Doubtless it is just on this account that the 
church is so popular and the services so well at- 
tended. To be sure, frequently the minister is a 
sensr.tional pulpit plocutionist. who exploits the 
latest scandal or the newest question of the day in 
order to interest the public and attract the cur- 
ious to church. Often the worldly quality of the 
sermon tends to another form of depreciation. 
The sermon becomes a lecture in general culture, 
scientific dissertation, or an educational exercise. 
Of course, the abandonment of the strictly relig- 
ious form of sermion brings many temptations to 
all except the best preachers; yet, in general, the 
American sermon is unusually powerful. 

'The popularity of the church does not de- 
pend only on the applicability of the sermon, but 
in part on social factors which are not nearly so 



Religious Life 277 

strong in any part of Europe. If the congrega- 
tion desires to bring the general public to church, 
it will gain its end most surely by offering attrac- 
tions of a religiously inditferent nature. These at- 
tractions may indirectly assist the moral work of 
the church, although their immediate motive is to 
stimulate church-going. The man who goes to 
church merely to hear the excellent music has 
necessarily to listen to the sermon ; and one who 
joins the church for the sake of its secular advan- 
tages is at least in that way detained from, the 
frivolous enjoyments of irreligious circles. Thus, 
the church has gradually become a social center 
with functions which are as unknown in Germany 
as the ^parlours' which belong to every church in 
America. The means of social attraction must nat- 
urally be adapted to the character of the congre- 
gation ; the picnics which are popular in the small 
towns, with their raffles and social games, their 
lemonade and cake, would not be appropriate to 
the wealthy churches of Fifth Avenue. In the 
large cities, aesthetic attractions must be substi- 
tuted — splendid windows, soft carpets, fine music, 
elegant costumes, and fashionable bazars for 
charity's sake. 

"But the social enjoyment consists not solely 
in what goes on within the walls of the church, 
but, specially in the small cities and rural dis- 
tricts, the church is the mediator of almost all so- 
cial intercourse. A person who moves to a new 
part of the town or to an entirelj^ new village, 
allies himself to some congregation if he is of the 



278 Democracy In America 

middle classes, in order to form social connections; 
and this is the more natural since, in the religious 
as in the social life of America, the women are the. 
most active part of the family. Even the Young 
Men's Christian Association^ and similar social or- 
ganizations under church auspices play an import- 
ant role utterly unlike anything in Europe. In 
Germany such organizations are popularly account- 
ed flabby, and their very name has a stale flavor. 
In America they are the centers of social activity, 
even in large cities, and have an extraordinary in- 
fluence on the hundreds of thousands of members 
who meet together in the splendid club buildings, 
and who are as much interested in sport and edu- 
cation as in religion. 

''How fully the church dominates social life 
may be seen in the prevalent custom of church 
weddings. The state does not make a civil wed- 
ding obligatory. As soon as the local civil board 
has officially licensed the married couple, the wed- 
ding may leigally be performed either by a civil 
officer or by a minister; yet it is a matter of course 
with the great majority of the population that the 
rings shall be exchanged before the altar. An 
avowed atheist is not received in any social circles 
above that of the ordinary saloon, and while a poli- 
tician need not fear that his particular religion will 
prevent his being supported by the members of 
other churches, he has no prospects of election to 
any office if he should be found an actual mater- 
ialist.*' * 

* 505. 



Religious Life 279 

Religion in America is characterized by a 
great multiplicity of sects, of which not a few in- 
volve the grossest superstitions and often run into 
fanaticism. De Tocqueville thought that the reli- 
gious eccentricities of the Americans w€re due to 
the preoccupation of the people with material 
pursuits which naturally led to a violent reaction 
towards the things of the spirit. He says: *'If their 
social condition, their present circumstances, and 
their laws did not confine the minds of the Ameri- 
cans so closely to the pursuit of worldly welfare, 
it is probable that they would display more reserve 
and more experience whenever their attention is 
turned to things immaterial, and that they would 
che*ck themselves without difficulty. But they 
feel imprisoned within bounds which they will ap- 
parently never be allowed to pass. As soon as 
they have passed these bounds, their minds know 
not where to fix themselves, and they often rush 
unrestrained beyond the range of common sense. 

Sj! * * 

"Although the desire of acquiring the good 
things of this world is the prevailing passion of 
the American people, certain momentary outbreaks 
occur, when their souls seem suddenly to burst 
the bonds of matter by which they are restrained, 
and to soar im.petuously towards heaven. In all 
the States of the Union, but especially in the half- 
peopled country of the Far West, wandering 
preachers may be met with who hawk about the 
word of God from place to place. Whole families 
— old men, women, and children — cross rough 



280 Democracy In America 

passes and untrodden wilds, coming from a great 
distance, to join a camp-meeting, where they to- 
tally forget for several days and nights, in listen- 
ing to these discourses, the cares of business and 
.even the most urgent wants of the body. Here 
and there, in the midst of American society, you 
meet with men, full of a fanatical and almost 
wild enthusiasm, which hardly exists in Europe. 
From time to time strange sects arise, which en- 
deavor to strike out extraordinary paths to eter- 
nal happiness. Religious insanity is very common 
in the United States."* 

Miinsterberg seems to agree substantially with 
De Tocqueville in accounting for the religious ec- 
centricities of the Americans. He remarks that 
''General revivals, great camp-moetings, and hys- 
terical and tumultuous meetings of prayer, with 
theatrical conversions and divine illuminations, 
have always played a prominent role in America. 
Thus at the end of the fifties, after a time of de- 
clining piety, a wave of religious conversion swept 
over the country, having all the appearance of a 
nervous epidemic. The doings of the rapidly 
growing Salvation Army also often have a some- 
what neurotic character. 

"It is difficult to say why this is so. As in 
every form of hysteria, suggestion is, of course, 
an important factor; but the manifestations are so 
marked that there must be some special disposition 
thereto. It almost seems as if a lack of other 
stimulants produced a pathological demand for 

*II, 142, 143. 



Religious Life 281 

religious excitement. Certainly in those portions 
of the country which are most affected, the life 
of the great masses, at least until recently, has 
been colorless and dull. There has been no stim- 
ulation of the fancy, such as is afforded by the 
Catholic church, or in former days was provided 
by the romantic events of monarchial history. Peo- 
ple have lacked the stimulation of amusements, 
festivals, the theatre and music ; daily life has 
been hard, morality rigorous, and alcohol was 
thought sinful. Where religion has been the sin- 
gle intellectual stimulus, it has been an intoxicant 
for the pining soul: and persons drank until they 
obtained a sort of hysterical relief from deadly 
reality."* 

* p. 517. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
RELIGIOUS LIFE— (Continued). 

NOTWITHSTANDING DIVERSITIES OF FORM RELIGION IN 
AMERICA HAS (X)MMON CHARACTERISTICS— ITS UN- 
DERLYING CREED IS SIMPLE, PRACTICAL AND SPE- 
CIALLY ADAPTED TO DEMOCRACY— AMERICANS IM- 
PATIENT WITH FORMALISM— ADVANTAGES OF RE- 
LIGIOUS FREEDOM OVER A STATE RELIGION— THE 
KINSHIP OF RELIGION AND DEMOCRACY AND THE 
COMMON IDEAL WHICH THEY TEND TO EFFECTUATE. 

Underlying the multiplicity of sects, religion 
in America has common characteristics which stand 
out with decided prominence, and which are spe- 
cially adapted to democratic conditions. Accord- 
ing to De Tocqueville, in order that a religion may 
survive in a democracy it must be of such simplic- 
ity that the masses can grasp it. Nothing can live 
in a democracy v:hich is not endorsed by public 
opinion. Religion must therefore lay hold of a 
few general truths, and let go everything of second- 
ary importance. 

He says: "I have seen no country in which 
Christianity is clothed with fewer forms, figures, 
and observances than in the United States; or 
v/here it presents more distinct, more simple, or 
more general notions to the mind. Although the 
Christians of America are divided into a multitude 

[282] 



Religious Life 283 

of sects, they all look upon their religion in the 
same light. This applies to Roman Catholicism 
as well as to the other forms of belief. There are 
no Romish priests who show less taste for the min- 
ute individual observances for extraordinary or 
peculiar means of salvation, or who cling more to 
the spirit, and less to the letter of the law, than 
the Roman Catholic priests of the United States. 
Nowhere is that doctrine of the Church, which 
prohibits the worship reserved to God alone from 
being offered to the saints, more clearly inculcated 
or more generally followed. Yet the Roman Cath- 
lics of America are very submissive and very sin- 
cere." * 

Religion in a democracy must be practical, 
dealing with the present life and its problems. 
''The American ministers of the gospel," observes 
De Tocqueville, "do not attempt to draw or to 
fix all the thoughts of man upon the life to come; 
they are willing to surrender a portion of his heart 
to the cares of the present ; seeming to consider the 
goods of this world as important, although as 
secondary, objects. If they take no part them- 
selves in productive labor, they are at least inter- 
ested in its progression, and ready to applaud its 
results; and whilst they never cease to point to 
the other world as the great object of the hopes 
and fears of the believer, they do not forbid him 
honestly to court prosperity in this. Far from at- 
tempting to show that these things are distinct and 
contrary to one another, they study rather to find 

* II, 2«. 



284 Democracy In America 

out on what point they are most nearly and closely 
connected. 

*'A11 the American clergy know and respect 
the intellectual supremacy exercised by the ma- 
jority; they never sustain any but necessary con- 
flicts with it. They take no share in the alterca- 
tions of parties, but they readily adopt the general 
opinions of their country and their age; and they 
allow themselves to be borne away without oppo- 
sition in the current of feeling and opinion by 
which everything around them is carried along. 
They endeavor to amend their contemporaries, but 
they do not quit fellowship with them. Public 
opinion is therefore never hostile to them ; it rather 
supports and protects them; and their belief owes 
its authority at the same time to the strength which 
is its own, and to that which they borrow from, the 
opinions of the majority. 

'Thus it is that, by respecting all democratic 
tendencies not absolutely contrary to herself, and 
by making use of several of them for her own 
purposes, religion sustains an advantageous strug- 
gle with that spirit of individual independence 
which is her most dangerous antagonist."* 

De Constant was very much impressed with 
the practical character of American religion. He 
says: ''Any man who renders service to his kind 
in word or deed is virtually a minister, not of any 
church, but of the Christian religion. This Amer- 
ican religion, to which I propose to revert, is in- 
comprehensible in Europe. It may be said to have 

* II, 29. 



Religious Life 285 

had no existence in the past. It concerns itself 
with the present and especially with the future — 
the future of humanity. It is practical, like all 
forms of American action. It exalts everything 
that strengthens courage, confidence, self-sacrifice 
and initiative. It has its saints, who have no con- 
nection with those in the calendar and are simply 
men who are useful to their fellows. Washington, 
Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, LaFayette, Pasteur, 
Victor Hugo, Beethoven. Columbus and Livingstone 
are saints."* 

''It is most interesting and encouraging to 
observe the successful way in w^hich the church as- 
sumes a great many and varied forms, and trans- 
forms itself into a club, a society and even a 
theater if need be. Any effort towards better 
things is religion. "t He quotes Phillips 
Brooks as saying, ''The mystery of the Holy Trin- 
ity simply appears insignificant in comparison with 
the enormous amount of moral and social work to 
be done by the American churches. Let every one 
enjoy his liberty and his own beliefs, the essential 
thing is what the church can do for its neigh- 
bors and the country."tt * h= * 

"At Boston I paid a visit to the house of Phil- 
lips Brooks, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of Massachusetts, who died at Boston 
Jan. 23, 1893. His admirers and disciples, in 
their desire to do due honor to his memory, built, 
not a church, but a house, the 'Phillips Brooks 

* p. 2o6. i p. 374. tt p. 386. 



286 Democracy In America 

House/ a club or center for the maintenance ot 
mutual assistance and faith, where the Harvard 
University students meet together with any one 
willing to work with them. What is this work? 
It consists of keeping Phillips Brooks's ideals alive 
and spreading their beneficent contagion, of train- 
ing people in the service of good causes, especially 
the most thankless. A system of relief for child- 
ren and the poor is in process of elaboration in 
this little house. Here also arrangements are 
made to look after the thousands of emigrants 
who land at Boston on their way to various parts 
of the country. They must be prevented from 
falling into bad hands and from being exploited 
and wrongly advised. It is a piece of great good 
fortune for them to have so many unexpected 
friends, guides and correspondents. Phillips 
Brooks set the example of these services during 
his lifetime. He advocated them, and he ad- 
dressed himself to young minds, to which he op- 
ened out endless horizons of good works. To this 
simplified form of religion he devoted, with all the 
force of his great nature, the latter part of his 
life.'"^' 

'*We thus see that Americans, far from giving 
up religion, consider it a source of new ideas and 
place it in the highest possible position. They are 
freeing it from its egotistical aims. To the Amer- 
ican Christian — who is not very far removed from 
an Israelite in this respect, — the main thing is 

*p. 391- 



Religious Life 287 

not to prepare for a future state but to make good 
use of the present."* 

Miinsterberg also comments on the practical 
nature of religion in America. ''Not only would 
it not be fair/' he says, "to estimate the religion of 
America by its perversions, but even if the reli- 
gious life of the country were amply described in 
the forms of its conservative congregations and 
confessions, the most important thing Vv^ould be 
still unmentioned : the spirit of moral self-perfec- 
tion common to all the religions of the country. 
To be sure, it is not to be supposed that all the 
morality in this nation is of religious origin. One 
sees clearly that this is not the case if one looks 
at American social ethics, which are independent 
of religious ethics, and if one notices how often 
motives from the two spheres unite in bringing 
about certain actions. The Americans would have 
developed a marked morality if they had not been 
brought up in the church, but the church has 
cooperated, especially when the nation was young 
and when far-reaching impulses were being de- 
veloped. And while the forms of faith have 
changed, the moral ideas have remained much the 
same. 

"Benjamin Wadsworth was president of Har- 
vard College in the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, and no greater religious contrast could 
be found than that between him and his present 
successor in office; between the orthodox Calvinist 
who said that it was by God's unmerited grace 

* p. 388. 



288 Democracy In America 

that we are not all burning in the flames of hell, 
as our sins so richly deserve, and the liberal Uni- 
tarian of today. And yet President Eliot could 
rightly say that, even after these two hundred 
years, he gladly subscribes to all the moral tenets 
of his early predecessor. Wadsworth exhorted 
parents to teach their sons to live soberly, vir^ 
tuously, and in the fear of God; to keep them from 
idleness, pride, envy, and malice; to teach them 
simply, kindly, and courteous behavior; to see that 
they learn to be useful in the world, and so marry 
and carry on their daily business as to avoid temp- 
tation and to grow in grace and in the fear of 
God. 

''Benjamin Franklin's catalogue of virtues 
which he desired to realize in himself, was: tem- 
perance, silence, order, simplicity, industry, hon- 
esty, justice, self-restraint, purity, peacefulness, 
continence, and modesty. In this he was not 
thinking of the church, but his worldly morals 
came to much the same thing as the Puritan's eth- 
ics. The goal is everywhere moral self-perfection 
— ^to learn, first of all, to govern one's natural de- 
sires, not for the sake of the efi'ect on others, but 
for the effect on one's self. * * * 

''Within the circle of ecclesiastical influences, 
moral concern for the self is everywhere in great 
evidence — the desire to be sober, temperate, in- 
dustrious, modest, and God-fearing. It has been 
said that these centuries of self-mastery are the 
cause of America's final triumph. Too m.any oth- 
er factors are there left out of account, but un- 



Religious Life 289 

doubtedly the theocratic discipline which held 
back all immoderation and indulgence, and often 
intolerantly extinguished the lower instincts, has 
profoundly influenced national life. And to this 
all churches have contributed alike. It seems as 
if the Calvinistic God of severity had been com- 
plemented by a God of love; but practically all 
churches have worked as if it was necessary, first 
of all, to improve radically evil men, to convert 
evil-doers, and to uproot natural instincts. The 
American church is today what it has always 
been, whether in or outside of Calvinism, a church 
militant, strong in its battle against unrighteous 
desires. To be churchly means to be in the battle- 
camp of a party; in the camp itself they make 
merry, but every one is armed against the enemy."* 

Religion in a democracy should have very 
little formalism. A democratic people have a 
quick and keen perception of the essence of things, 
and a natural impatience with symbols and cere- 
monies which, they think, only obscure the reali- 
ties. In this connection, De Tocqueville says 
**that religions ought to assume fewer external 
observances in democratic periods than at any 
others. In speaking of philosophical method 
among the Americans, I have shown that nothing 
is more repugnant to the human mind in an age 
of equality than the idea of subjection to forms. 
Men living at such times are impatient of figures; 
to their eyes symbols appear to be the puerile arti- 

* D. 521. 



290 Democracy In America 

fice which is used to conceal or to set off truths, 
which should more naturally be bared to the light 
of open day: they are unmoved by ceremonial ob- 
servances, and they are predisposed to attach a 
secondary importance to the details of public wor- 
ship. Those whose care it is to regulate the ex- 
ternal forms of religion in a democratic age should 
pay a close attention to these natural propensities 
of the human mind, in order not unnecessarily to 
run counter to them. I firmly believe in the neces- 
sity of forms, which fix the human mind in the 
contemplation of abstract truths, and stimulate its 
ardor in the pursuit of them, whilst they invigorate 
its powers of retaining them steadfastly. Nor do 
T suppose that it is possible to maintain a religion 
without external observances; but, on the other 
hand, I am persuaded that, in the ages upon which 
we are entering, it would be peculiarly dangerous 
to multiply them beyond measure; and that they 
ought rather to be limited to as much as is abso- 
lutely necessary to perpetuate the doctrine itself, 
which is the substance of religions of which the 
ritual is only the form. (In all religions there 
are some ceremonies w^hich are inherent in the 
substance of the faith itself, and in these nothing 
should, on any account, be changed. This is 
especially the case with Roman Catholicism, in 
which the doctrine and the form are frequently so 
closely united as to form one point of belief.) A 
religion w^hich should become more minute, more 
peremptory, and more surcharged with small ob- 
ser\^ances at a time in which men are becoming 



Religious Life 291 

more equal, would soon find itself reduced to a 
band of fanatical zealots in the midst of an infidel 
people."* 

The casual student of Democracy is apt to 
single out France as a country where democracy 
is associated with irreligion. But the religion of 
the French people is gi^eatly underestimated, and 
is perhaps misunderstood even in France. The 
democrats of France, because of their long war- 
fare with the old autocratic religious regime, are 
disinclined to profess a religion, but, at the same 
time, any one capable of penetrating beneath the 
surface of things, can easily discover among the 
French people a spiritual impulsion which is not 
unlike that found in America and England. *'I 
am certain," says Paul Blouet, ''that if, in France, 
you searched into the hearts of the people, you 
would find there much less atheism than in many 
other countries. Religious belief seems to be the 
appanage of the royalist party, and other people 
think they make a show of republicanism by throw- 
ing over the belief of the royalists." f 

A country which can give to the world such 
works as Hugo's "Les Miserables" or Sabatier's ''Re- 
ligion of Authority," must necessarily have a spirit- 
ual atmosphere in which men may breathe those 
essential elements of religion which are exempli- 
fied in the life of Christ. In fact, religion in 
France shows its kinship with that of other demo- 
cracies in an indifference to formalism, and an 

'=11, 27. t p. 1"". 



292 Democracy In America 

emphasis upon simple, fundamental and practical 
truths. 

The abolition of state religion? in America 
seems to have been favorably commented upon 
by all foreign critics. De Tocque\dlle observed 
that religious freedom and political freedom were 
working together harmoniously in this new re- 
public. ''Upon my arrival in the United States," 
he says, ''the religious aspect of the country was 
the first thing which struck my attention; and the 
longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the 
great political consequences resulting from this 
state of things, to v/hich I was unaccustomed. In 
France I had almost always seen the spirit of 
religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses 
diametrically opposed to each other; but in Amer- 
ica I found that they were intimately united, and 
that they reigned in common over the same coun- 
try. My desire to discover the causes of this phe- 
nomenon increased from day to day. In order to 
satisfy it I questioned the members of all the dif- 
ferent sects; and T more especially sought the 
society of the clergy, who are the depositaries of 
the different persuasions, and who are more es- 
pecially interested in their duration. As a mem- 
ber of the Roman Catholic church I was more 
particularly brought into contact with several of 
its priests, with whom I became intimately ac- 
quainted. To each of these men I expressed my 
astonishment and I explained my doubts. I found 
that they differed upon matter of detail alone; 
and that they mainly attributed the peaceful do- 



Religious Life 293 

minion of religion in their country to the separ- 
ation of Church and State. I do not hesitate to 
affirm that during my stay in America I did not 
meet with a single individual, of the clergy or of 
the laity, who was not of the same opinion upon 
this point/'t * * * 

*The unbelievers of Europe attack the Chris- 
tians as their political opponents, rather than as 
their religious adversaries; they hate the Chris- 
tian religion as the opinion of a party, much more 
than as an error of belief; and they reject the 
clergy less because they are the representatives of 
the Divinity than because they are the allies of 
authority. 

"In Europe, Christianity has been intimately 
united to the powers of the earth. Those powers 
are now in decay, and it is, as it were, buried un- 
der their ruins. The living body of religion has 
been bound down to the dead corpse of superannu- 
ated polity; cut but the bonds which restrain it, 

and that which is alive will arise once more. "ft 
* * * 

''I am no believer in the prosperity, any more 
than in the durability, of official philosophies and 
as to State religions, I have always held, that if 
they be sometimes of momentary service to the 
interests of political power, they always sooner 
or later, become fatal to the Church."* 

In 1825 Sydney Smith, in reviewing several 
books on America, remarked upon our religious 

- I, 314. tf I, 319. * II, 156. 



294 Democracy In America 

freedom as follows: ''A lesson on the importance 
of Religious Toleration, we are determined, it 
would seem, not to learn, — either from America 
or from any other quarter of the globe. The high 
sheriff of New York, last year, was a Jew. It was 
with the utmost difficulty that a bill was carried 
this year to allow the first duke of England to 
carry a gold stick before the king — because he 
was a Catholic — and yet we think ourselves en- 
titled to indulge in impertinent sneers at Ameri- 
ca, — as if civilization did not depend more upon 
making wise laws for the promotion of human 
happiness, than in having good inns, and post- 
horses, and civil waiters. The circumstances of 
the Dissenters' marriage bill are such as would 
excite the contempt of a Choctaw or Cherokee, if 
he could be brought to understand them. A cer- 
tain class of Dissenters beg they may not be com- 
pelled to say that they marry in the name of the 
Trinity, because they do not believe in the Trinity. 
Never mind, say the corruptionists, you must go 
on saying you marry in the name of the Trinity, 
whether you believe it or not. We know that such 
a protestation from you will be false; but unless 
you make it> your wives shall be concubines, and 
your children illegitimate. Is it possible to conceive 
a greater or more useless tyranny than this?'* * * * 

"In fact, it is hardly possible for any nation to 
show a greater superiority over another than the 
Americans, in this particular, have done over this 
country. They have fairly and completely, and 
probably forever, extinguished that spirit of re- 



Religious Life 295 

ligious persecution which has been the employ- 
ment and the curse of mankind for four or five 
centuries, — not only that persecution which im- 
prisons and scourges for religious opinions, but 
the tyranny of incapacitation, which, by disquali- 
fying from civil offices, and cutting a man off from 
the lawful objects of ambition, endeavors to stran- 
gle religious freedom. in silence, and to enjoy all 
the advantages, without the blood, and noise, and 
fire, of persecution. What passes in the mind of 
one mean blockhead is the general history of all 
persecution. This man pretends to know better 
than me — I cannot subdue him by argument; but I 
will take care he shall never be mayor or alder- 
man of the town in which he lives; I will never 
consent to the repeal of the Test Act or to Catholic 
Emancipation: I will teach the fellow to differ 
from me in religious opinions!' So says the Epis- 
copalian to the Catholic — and so the Catholic says 
to the Protestant. But the wisdom of America 
keeps them all down — secures to them all their 
just rights — gives to each of them their sepai-^te 
pews, and bells, and ,steeples — makes them all 
aldermen in their turns, and quietly extinguishes 
the faggots which each is preparing for the com- 
bustion of the other. Nor is this indifference to 
religious subjects in the American people, but pure 
civilization — through comprehension of what is 
best calculated to secure the public happiness and 
peace — and determination that this happiness and 
peace shall not be violated by the insolence of any 
human being, in the garb, and under the sanction 



296 Democracy In America 

of religion. In this particular, the Americans are 
at the head of all the nations of the world: and 
at the same time they are, especially in the East- 
ern and Midland States, so far from being indif- 
ferent on subjects of religion, that they may be 
justly characterized as a very religious people; 
but they are devout without being unjust (the 
great problem in religion) ; a higher proof of 
civilization than painted tea-cups, waterproof 
leather, or broadcloth at two guineas a yard." 
(Essay on America.) 

Miinsterberg, among more recent writers, 
speaks favorably of our separation of the Church 
from the State. 'The less the authority of the 
state," he says, *'the more society as a whole real- 
izes its duties; and while society remains indiffer- 
ent as long as religion is enforced by external 
means, it becomes energetic as soon as it feels 
itself responsible for the general religious situa- 
tion." * * "A religiously inclined population 
which has made churchliness a social and not a 
political obligation, affords the American church 
the most favorable condition for its success that 
could be imagined."* 

There remains to note the necessary connec- 
tion which seems to exist between religion and 
democracy. These two forces appear to be de- 
pendent upon each other, and both naturally tend 
towards the same goal, i. e./ towards a social re- 
lationship which realizes the golden rule. This 
point-of-view has been clearly presented by our 

*p. 500. 



Religious Life 297 

fellow-countryman Charles H. Cooley. He points 
out that in every primary group, i. e., a group con- 
sisting of a single family, with its play-group of 
children and its neighborhood group of adults, 
there is a natural tendency to develop certain fund- 
amental virtues, such as sympathy, justness, kind- 
ness, and self-sacrifice. The intimacy and co- 
operation of the group beget a moral unity whose 
fruitage is the common virtues of human nature. 
The more a group, acts in common the more willing- 
ly each sacrifices self in the interest of the others.* 
The tendency of a democracy is towards an ever 
widening area of common feeling and action, 
wherein the virtues of the primary group come to 
be realized in the population as a whole. In the 
large, as in the small group, mutual dependence 
awakens a consciousness of common ideals, and a 
feeling of kinship and good-fellowship. **A right 
democracy," says Cooley, '*is simply the applica- 
tion on a large scale of principles which are uni- 
versally felt to be right as applied to a small 
group — principles of free cooperation motived by 
a common spirit which each serves according to 
his capacity. Most of what is characteristic of 
the time is evidently of this nature; as for instance, 
our sentiment of fair play, our growing kindness, 
our cult of womanhood, our respect for hand la- 
bor, and our endeavor to organize society econo- 
mically or on 'business principles.' And it is per- 
haps equally evident that the ideas which these 
replace — of caste, of domination, of military 



* Social Organization, Chapters III and IV 



298 Democracy In America 

^lory, of 'conspicuous leisure/ and the like — sprang 
from a secondary and artificial system, based on 
conditions which forbade a large realization of 
primary ideals. "f * * * 

"The democratic movement, insomuch as it 
feels a common spirit in all men, is of the same 
nature as Christianity ; and it is said with truth that 
while the world was never so careless as now of 
the mechanism of religion, it was never so Chris- 
tian in feeling. A deeper sense of a common life, 
both as incarnated in men about us and as infer- 
red in some larger whole behind and above them 
— in God — belongs to the higher spirit of democ- 
racy as it does to the teachings of Jesus. 

"He calls the mind out of the narrow and 
transient self of sensual appetites and visible ap- 
purtenances, which all of us in our awakened 
moments feel to be inferior, and fills it with the 
incorrupt good of higher sentiment. We are to 
love men as brothers, to fix our attention upon the 
best that is in them, and to make their good our 
own ambition. 

"Such ideals are perennial in the human heart 
and as sound in psychology as in religion. The 
mind, in its best moments, is naturally Christian; 
because when we are most fully alive to the life 
about us the sympathetic becomes the rational; 
what is good for you is good for me because I share 
your life; and I need no urging to do by you as 1 
would have you do by me. Justness and kindness 
are matters of course, and also humility, which 
t p. lift. 



Religious Life 299 

comes from being aware of something superior to 
your ordinary self. To one in which human na- 
ture is fully awake 'Love your enemies and do 
good to them that despitefully use you' is natural 
and easy, because despiteful people are seen to be 
in a state of unhappy aberration from the higher 
life of kindness, and there is an impulse to help 
them to get back. The awakened mind identi- 
fies itself with other persons, living the sympa- 
thetic life and following the golden rule by im- 
pulse, 

*'To put it otherwise, Christ and modern de- 
mocracy alike represent a protest against what- 
ever is dead in institutions, and an attempt to 
bring life closer to the higher impulses of human 
nature. There is a common aspiration to effect- 
uate homely ideals of justice send kindness. The 
modem democrat is a plain man and Jesus was 
another. It is no wonder, then, that the charac- 
teristic thought of the day is preponderantly 
Christian, in the sense of sharing the ideals of 
Christ, and that in so far as it distrusts the Church 
it is on the ground that the Church is not Christian 
enough."! * * * 

'•'An ideal democracy is in its nature religious, 
and its true sovereign may be said to be the higher 
nature, or God, which it aspires to incarnate in 
human institutions."* 

i p. 204. -• p. 20.-;. 



CHAPTER XVin 
GENERAL INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ACCORDING TO DE TOCQUEVILLE DEMOCRACY IS VERY 
STIMULATING TO INTELLECTUAL EFFORTS— BUT IT 
DISCOURAGES LOFTY AMBITIONS— ^MEN SET THEIR 
HEARTS UPON PETTY ACHIEVEMENTS— AND CARE 
LITTLE FOR FAME— LIFE IN A DEMOCRACY IS TOO 
TRANQUIL TO AROUSE GREAT PASSIONS— DE TOCQUE- 
VILLE OVERLOOKS THE INSPIRATIONS NATURAL TO 
A DEMOCRACY. 

De Tocqueville believed that a democracy 
tends to give a general stimulus to intellectual cul- 
ture. 'Tree and democratic communities," he 
says, "will always contain a considerable number 
of people enjoying opulence or competency. The 
wealthy will not be so closely linked to each other 
as the members of the former aristocratic class 
of society: their propensities will be different, and 
they will scarcely ever enjoy leisure as secure or 
as complete : but they will be far more numerous 
than those who belonged to that class of society 
could ever be. These persons will not be strictly 
confined to the cares of practical life, and they 
will still be able, though in different degrees,, to 
indulge in the pursuits and pleasures of the in- 
tellect. In those pleasures they will indulge; for 
if it be true that the human mind leans on one 
side to the narrow, the practical, and the useful, 

[800] 



General Intellectual Life 301 

it naturally rises on the other to the infinite, the 
spiritual, and the beautiful. Physical wants con- 
fine it to the earth ; but, as soon as the tie is loos- 
ened, it will unbend itself again. 

*'Not only will the number of those who can 
take an interest in the productions of the mind be 
enlarged, but the taste for intellectual enjoyment 
will descend, step by step, even to those who, in 
aristocratic societies, seem to have neither time or 
ability to indulge in them. When hereditary 
wealth, the privileges of rank, and the preroga- 
tives of birth have ceased to be, and when every 
man derives his strength from himself alone, it 
becomes evident that the chief cause of disparity 
between the fortunes of men is the mind. What- 
ever tends to invigorate, to extend, or to adorn the 
mind, instantly rises to great value. The utility 
of knowledge becomes singularly conspicuous even 
to the eyes of the multitude: those who have no 
taste for its charms set store upon its results, and 
make some efforts to acquire it."t * * * 

"As soon as the multitude begins to take an 
interest in the labors of the mind, it finds out that 
to excel in some of them is a powerful method of 
acquiring fame, power, or wealth. The restless 
ambition which equality begets instantly takes this 
direction as it does alj others. The number of 
those who cultivate science, letters, and the arts, 
becomes immense. The intellectual world starts 
into prodigious activity : everyone endeavors to 
open for himself a path there, and to draw the 

t II. 40. 



302 Democracy In America 

eyes of the public after him. Something analogous 
occurs to what happens in society in the United 
States, politically considered. What is done is 
often imperfect, but the attempts are innumerable; 
and, although the results of individual effort are 
commonly very small, the total amount is always 
very large. 

**It is therefore not true to assert that men 
living in democratic ages are naturally indifferent 
to science, literature, and the arts: only it must be 
acknowledged that they cultivate them after their 
own fashion, and bring to the task their own pe- 
culiar qualifications and deficiencies."* 

But De Tocqueville thought that a democracy 
tended to repress great ambitions. ''The first 
thing which strikes a traveller in the United 
States," he says, **is the innumerable mul- 
titude of those who seek to throw off their 
original condition; and the second is the rarity of 
lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the 
universally ambitious stir of society. No Ameri- 
cans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise; but 
hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great 
magnitude, or to drive at very lofty aims. All are 
constantly seeking to acquire property, power, and 
reputation — few contemplate these things upon a 
great scale; and this is the more surprising, as 
nothing is to be discerned in the manners or laws 
of America to limit desire, or to prevent it from 
spreading its impulses in every direction. It seems 
difficult to attribute this singular state of things to 

* II, 41. 



General Intellectual Life 303 

the equality of social conditions; for at the instant 
when that same equality was established in France, 
the flight of ambition became unbounded. Never- 
theless, I think that the principal cause which may 
be assigned to this fact is to be found in the social 
condition and democratic manners of the Ameri- 
cans/'t * * * 

"As wealth is subdivided and knowledge dif- 
fused, no one is entirely destitute of education or 
of property; the privileges and disqualifications 
of caste being abolished, and men having shattered 
the bonds which held them fixed, the notion of ad- 
vancement suggests itself to every mind, the de- 
sire to rise swells in every heart, and all men want 
to mount above their station: ambition is the uni- 
versal feeling. 

"But if the equality of conditions gives some 
resources to all the members of the community, it 
also prevents any of them from having resources of 
great extent, which necessarily circumscribes their 
desires within somewhat narrow limits. Thus 
amongst democratic nations ambition is ardent and 
continual, but its aim is not habitually lofty; and 
life is generally spent in eagerly coveting small 
objects which are within reach. What chiefly di- 
verts the men of democracies from lofty ambition 
is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the ve- 
hemence of the exertions they daily make to im- 
prove them. They strain their faculties to the 
utmost to achieve paltry results, and this cannot 

ill. 254. 



304 Democracy In America 

fail speedily to limit their discernment and to cir- 
cumscribe their powers."t * * * 

'^Another thing which prevents the men of 
democratic periods from easily indulging in the 
pursuits of lofty objects, is the lapse of time which 
they foresee must take place before they can be 
ready to approach them. *It is a great advantage' 
says Pascal, *to be a man of quality, since it 
brings one man as forward at eighteen or twenty 
as another man would be at fifty, which is a clear 
gain of thirty years/ Those thirty years are com- 
monly wanting to the ambitious characters of de- 
mocracies. The principle of equality, which al- 
lows every man to arrive at everything, prevents 
all men from rapid advancement.'*tt * " * 

**Thus in proportion as men become more 
alike, and the principle of equality is more peace- 
ably and deeply infused into the institutions and 
manners of the country, the rules of advancement 
become more inflexible, advancement itself slower, 
the difficulty of arriving quickly at a certain height 
far greater. From hatred of privilege and from 
the embarrassment of choosing, all men are at 
Jast constrained, whatever may be their standard, 
to pass the same ordeal; all are indiscriminately 
subjected to a multitude of petty preliminary ex- 
ercises, in which their youth is wasted and their 
imagination quenched, so that they despair of ever 
fully attaining what is held out to them ; and when 
at length they are in a condition to perform any 

tn, 256. till, 257. 



General Intellectual Life 305 

extraordinary acts, the taste for such things has 
forsaken them. 

**In China, where the equality of conditions is 
exceedingly great and very ancient, no man passes 
from one public office to another without undergo- 
ing a probationary trial. This probation occurs 
afresh at every stage of his career; and the notion 
is now so rooted in the manners of the people that 
I remember to have read a Chinese novel in which 
the hero, after numberless crosses, succeeds at 
length in touching the heart of his mistress by tak- 
ing honors. A lofty ambition breathes with dif- 
ficulty in such an atmosphere."! * * * 

**I believe that ambitious men in democracies 
are less engrossed than any others with the in- 
terests and the judgment of posterity; the present 
moment alone engages and absorbs them. They 
are more apt to complete a number of undertak- 
ings with rapidity than to raise lasting moun- 
ments of their achievements; and they care much 
more for success than for fame."* 

'*I confess that I apprehend much less for 
democratic society from the boldness than from 
the mediocrity of desires. What appears to me 
most to be dreaded is that, in the midst of the small 
incessant occupations of private life, ambition 
should lose its vigor and its greatness — ^that the 
passions of man should abate, but at the same 
time be lowered, so that the march of society 
should every day become more tranquil and less 

ill, 257. *n, 259. 



306 Democracy In America 

aspiring. I think then that the leaders of modern 
society would be wrong to seek to lull the com- 
munity by a state of too uniform and too peaceful 
happiness ; and that it is well to expose it from time 
to time to matters of difficulty and danger, in order 
to' raise ambition and to give it a field of action."* 
More recent writers agree with De Tocqueville 
in his view of the effect of democracy upon lofty 
achievements. For instance, Matthew Arnold 
makes the statement that ''everything is against 
distinction in A.merica, and against the sense of 
elevation to be gained through admiring and re- 
specting it. The glorification of 'the average 
man,' who is quite a religion with statesmen and 
publicists there, is against it. The addiction to 
'the funny man,' who is a national misfortune 
there, is against it. Above all, the newspapers 
are against it." ** 

Sir Lepel Grifldn remarks that "The political 
bias of republics to equality; the popular dislike of 
inherited rank and wealth; the redistribution of 
acquired property, all react unfavorably on cul- 
ture, and discourage the growth of the leisured 
and refined class in whose existence is the best 
hope for the creation and appreciation of works 
of art."t 

These writers above quoted seem to have over- 
looked the great stimulation to love of fame which 
naturally comes from a group of people bound to- 
gether like the members of a family. As the head 
of a family values the good opinion of his descend- 

* II, 2.^9. »:'* p. 177. t p. 95. 



General Intellectual Life 307 

ants, so does a citizen of a democracy value the 
good opinion of those who belong to his group, and 
who live after him. The more intimately one is 
bound to any group the more reason one has to 
crave the approbation of one's posterity. If some men 
in a democracy are discouraged from striving for 
great things, because of the intensity of competition 
and the long period of discipline and waiting, it 
should not be forgotten that the equality of oppor- 
tunities opens the door to men of genius to an ex- 
tent that is not possible in a society of castes. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
LITERATURE. 

GREAT DEMAND FOR LITERARY PRODUCTS— ENOBMOUS 
SALE OF NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES— EVERY 
HOME HAS A LIBRARY— GROWTH OF POPULAR AND 
SCIENTIFIC LIHRARIES— DEMOCRATIC TASTE CALLS 
FOR STRIKING AND VIGOROUS FICTION RATHER 
THAN THAT OF DEPTH AND REFINEMENT— AMERICA 
MUCH BEHIND EUROPE IN GREAT LITERARY WORKS- 
DEMOCRATIC CONDITIONS PECULIARLY AFFECTING 
POETRY. 

Foreign observers are generally very much 
astonished at the great number and variety of lit- 
erary products consumed by the American people. 
"When a traveler goes into a bookseller's shop in 
the United States," says DeTocqueville. "and ex- 
amines the American books upon the shelves, the 
number of works appears extremely great; whilst 
that of known authors appears, on the contrary, 
to be extremely small. He will, first meet with a 
number of elementary treaties, destined to teach 
the rudiments of human knowledge. Most of these 
books are written in Europe ; the Americans reprint 
them, adapting them to their own country. Next 
comes an enormous quantity of religious works, 
Bibles, sermons, edifying anecdotes, controversial 
divinity, and reports of charitable societies; lastly, 
appears the long catalogue of political pamphlets. 

[308] 



Literature 309 

In America, parties do not write books to combat 
each other's opinions, but pamphlets which are cir- 
culated for a day with incredible rapidity, and then 
expire. In the midst of all these obscure produc- 
tions of the human brain are to be found the 
more remarkable works of that small number of 
authors, whose names are, or ought to be, known 
to Europeans. 

"Although America is perhaps in our days the 
civilized country in which literature is least at- 
tended to, a large number of persons are neverthe- 
less to be found there who take an interest in the 
productions of the mind, and who make them, if 
not the study of their lives, at least the charm of 
their leisure hours. But England supplies these 
readers with the larger portion of the books which 
they require. Almost all important English books 
are republished in the United States. The literary 
genius of Great Britain still darts its rays into the 
recesses of the forests of the New World. There 
is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a 
few old volumes of Shakespeare. I remember that 
I read the feudal play of Henry V for the first time 
in a log-house."* 

'1 have already said that this state of things 
is very far from originating in democracy alone, 
and that the cause of it must be sought for in sev- 
eral peculiar circumstances independent of the 
democratic principle. If the Americans, retaining 
the same laws and social conditions, had had a 
different origin, and had been transported into an- 

* II. .".S. 



310 Democracy In America 

other country, I do not question that they would 
have had a literature. Even as they now are, I 
am convinced that they will ultimately have one ; 
but its character will be different from that which 
marks the American literary productions of our 
time, and that character will be peculiarly its own. 
Nor is it impossible to trace this character be- 
forehand. 

'*I suppose an aristocratic people amongst 
whom letters are cultivated ; the labors of the mind, 
as well as the affairs of state, are conducted by a 
ruling class in society. The literary as well as the 
political career is almost entirely confined to this 
class, or to those nearest to it in rank. These prem- 
ises suffice to give me a key to all the rest. When 
a small number of the same men are engaged at 
the same time upon the same objects, they easily 
concert with one another, and agree upon certain 
leading rules which are to govern them each and 
all. If the object which attracts the attention of 
these men is literature, the productions of the mind 
will soon be subjected by them to precise canons, 
from which it will no longer be allowable to depart. 
If these men occupy a hereditary position in the 
country, they will be naturally inclined, not only to 
adopt a certain number of fixed rules for them- 
selves, but to follow those which their forefathers 
laid down for their own guidance ; their code will 
be at once strict and traditional."! * * * 

'In democracies it is by no means the case 
that all the men who cultivate literature have re- 
in, 60. 



Literature 311 

ceived a literary education ; and most of those who 
have some tinge of belles-lettres are either engaged 
in politics, or in a profession which onl}^ allows 
them to taste occasionally and by stealth the pleas- 
ures of the mind. These pleasures, therefore, do 
not constitute the principal charm of their lives; 
but they are considered as a transient and neces- 
sary recreation amidst the serious labors of life. 
Such men can never acquire a sufficiently intimate 
knowledge of the art of literature to appreciate 
its more delicate beauties; and the minor shades 
of expression must escape them. As the time they 
can devote to letters is very short, they seek to 
make the best use of the whole of it. They prefer 
books which may be easily procured, quickly read, 
and which require no learned researches to be 
understood. They ask for beauties, self-proffered 
and easily enjoyed; above all, they must have what 
is unexpected and new. Accustomed to the strug- 
gle, the crosses, and the monotonj^ of practical life, 
they require rapid emotions, startling passages — 
truths or errors brilliant enough to rouse them up, 
and plunge them at once, as if by violence, into 
the midst of the subject. 

''Why should I say more? Or who does not 
understand what is about to follow, before I have 
expressed it? Taken as a whole, literature in dem- 
ocratic ages can never present, as it does in the 
periods of aristocracy, an aspect of order, regular- 
ity, science, and art ; its form wilL on the contrary, 
ordinarily be slighted, sometimes despised. Style 
will be frequently fantastic, incorrect, overbur- 



312 Democracy In America 

(iened, and loose — almost always vehement and bold. 
Authors will aim at rapidity of execution, more 
than at perfection of detail. Small productions 
will be more common than bulky books; there will 
be more wit than erudition, more imagination than 
profundity; and literary performances will bear 
marks of an untutored and rude vigor of thought 
— frequently of great variety and singular fecun- 
dity. The object of authors will be to astonish 
rather than to please, and to stir the passions more 
than to charm the taste."* 

Commenting upon the popularity of every 
kind of literature in the United States, Miinsterberg 
says: 'The great feature of all classes of the pop- 
ulation is the tremendous production of periodical 
literature. Statistics show that in the United States 
in the year 1903, there were published 2,300 daily 
papers, more than 15,000 weeklies, 2,800 monthlies, 
and 200 quarterlies — in all, 21,000 periodicals. 
These are more periodicals than are published in 
all Europe ; in Germany alone there are 7,500. The 
tremendous significance of these figures, particu- 
larly as compared with the European, becomes clear 
only when one considers the number of copies 
which these periodicals circulate. Not merely the 
newspapers of the three cities having over a million 
inhabitants, but also those of the larger provincial 
towns, reach a circulation of hundreds of thou- 
sands; and more surprising still is the unparalleled 
circulation of the weekly and monthly papers. 
Huge piles of magazines, containing the most 

* TI. 63. 



Literature 313 

serious sort of essays, are sold from every news- 
stand in a few hours. And anybody who knows 
New England is not surprised at the statement 
which T. W. Hig-ginson makes in his recollections, 
that he came once to a small Massachusetts village 
of only twenty-four homes, nineteen of which sub- 
scribed to the Atlantic Monthly, a publication 
which is most nearly comparable to the Deutsche 
Rundschau. 

"The surprisingly large sale of expensive books 
among rich families is quite as gratifying as the 
huge consumption of magazines among the middle 
classes. Editions de luxe are often sold entire at 
fabulous prices before the edition is out, and illus- 
trated scientific works costing hundreds of dollars 
ahvays find a ready sale. These are merely the 
symptoms of the fact that every American home 
has its book cases proportionate to its resources, 
and large private libraries are found not merely in 
the homes of scholars and specialists. In the pal- 
aces of merchant princes, the library is often the 
handsomest room, although it is sometimes so 
papered with books that it looks as if the architect 
had supplied them along with the rugs and chan- 
deliers. One more commonly finds that the library 
is the real living room of the house. If one looks 
about in such treasure apartments, one soon loses 
the sense of wonder completely; rare editions and 
valuable curiosities are there brought together with 
the greatest care and intelligence into an appro- 
priate home. There are probably very few Ger- 
man private houses with collections of books and 



314 Democracy In America 

paintings comparable, for instance, to that of J. 
Montgomery Sears in Boston. The whole interior 
is so wonderfully harmonious that even the auto- 
graph poems and letters of Goethe and Schiller 
seem a matter of course. Rut from the book 
shelves of the millionaire to the carefully selected 
little shelf of the poor school ma'am, from the 
monumental home of the national library to the 
modest little library building of every small village, 
from the nervous and rapid perusal of the scholar 
to the slow making out of the workingman who 
pours over his newspaper on the street corner, or of 
the shop-girl with the latest novel in the elevated 
train, there is everywhere life and activity center- 
ing round the world of print, and this popularity 
of books is growing day by day.'"^ 

Of the public libraries of the United States, 
Mlinsterberg remarks: 'The American's fondness 
for reading finds clearest expression in the growth 
of libraries, and in few matters of civilization is 
America so well fitted to teach the Old World a 
lesson. Europe has many large and ancient collec- 
tions of books, and Germany more than all the 
rest; but they serve only one single purpose — that 
of scientific investigation; they are the laboratories 
of research. They are chiefly lodged with the 
great universities, and even the large municipal 
libraries are mostly used by those who need ma- 
terial for productive labors, or wish to become con- 
versant with special topics. 

* p. iTiG. 



Literature 315 

"Exactly the same type of large library has 
grown up in America; and here, too, it is chiefly 
the universities whose stock of books is at the serv- 
ice of the scientific world. Besides these, there are 
special libraries belonging to learned societies, state 
law^ labraries, special libraries of government bu- 
reaus and of museums, and largest of all the Library 
of Congress. The collection of such scientific books 
began at the earliest colonial period, and at first 
under theological auspices. The Calvinist Church, 
more than any other, inclined to the study of books. 
As early as 1790 the catalogue of Harvard College 
contained 350 pages, of which 150 were taken up 
by theological works. Harvard has today almost 
a million books, most in the department of litera- 
ture, philology, history, philosophy, and jurispru- 
dence. There are, moreover, in Boston the state 
library of law, with over a hundred thousand vol- 
umes; the Athenaeum, with more than two hundred 
thousand books; the large scientific library of the 
Institute of Technology, and many others. Simi- 
larly, in other large cities, the university libraries 
are the nucleus for scientific labors, and are sur- 
ix)unded by admirable special libraries, particularly 
in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Then, 
too, the small academic towns, like Princeton, 
Ithaca, New Haven and others, have valuable col- 
lections of books, which in special subjects are 
often unique. For many years the American uni- 
versity libraries have been the chief purchasei^ of 
the special collections left by deceased European 
professors. And it often happens, especially 



316 Democracy In America 

through the gift of grateful alumni, that collec- 
tions of the greatest scientific value, which could 
not be duplicated, come into the possession even of 
lesser institutions."* 

"The great difference between Europe and 
America begins with the libraries which are not 
learned, but which are designed to serve popular 
education. The American public library which is 
not for science, but for education, is to the Euro- 
pean counterpart as the Pullman express train to 
the village post-chaise. ''f 

Carlyle, Lecky, Mrs. Trollope, Matthew Ar- 
nold, and many other critics have commented upon 
the lack of any great literary productions in Amer- 
ica. Of the quality of American literature in the 
early nineteenth century, Mrs. Trollope remarks: 
"The character of the American literature is, gen- 
erally speaking, pretty justly appreciated in Europe. 
The immense exhalation of periodical trash, which 
penetrate into every cot and comer of the country, 
aad which is generally sucked in by all ranks, is 
unquestionably one great cause of its inferiority. 
Where newspapers are the vehicles of the wit and 
wisdom of the people, the higher graces of com- 
position can hardly be looked for. 

"That there are many among them who can 
write well, is most certain ; but it is at least equally 
so, that they have little encouragement to exercise 
the power in any manner more dignified than be- 
coming the editor of a newspaper or a magazine. 

* p. 450. i p. 451. 



Literature 317 

9 

As far as I could judge, the best writers are far 
from being the most popular. The general taste is 
decidedly bad ; this is obvious, not only from the 
mass of slip-slop poured forth by the daily and 
weekly press, but from the inflated tone of eulogy 
in which their insect authors are jauded.''t 

**They are great novel readers, but the market 
is chiefly furnished by England. They have, how- 
ever, a few very good native novels. Mr. Flint*s 
Trancis Barrian' is delightful. There is vigor and 
freshness in his writings that is exactly in accord- 
ance with what one looks for in the literature of 
a new country; and yet, strange to say, it is exactly 
what is most wanting in that of America. It ap- 
peared to me that the style of their imaginative 
composition was almost always affected and in- 
flated. Even in treating their great national sub- 
ject of romance, the Indians, they are seldom either 
powerful or original. A few well-known general 
features, moral and physical, are presented over 
and over again in all their Indian stories, till in 
reading them you lose all sense of individual char- 
acter. Mr. Flint's ^History of the Mississippi Valley' 
is a work of great interest and information, and 
will, I hope, in time find its way to England, where 
I think it is much more likely to be appreciated 
than in America. 

''Dr. Channing is a writer too well known in 
EIngland to require my testimony to his great abil- 
ity. As a preacher he has, perhaps, hardly a rival 
anywhere. This gentleman is an Unitarian, and I 

t p. 280. 



318 Democracy In America 

r: 

was informed by several persons well acquainted 
with the literary characters of the country, that 
nearly all their distinguished men were of this 
persuasion. 

**Mr. Pierpont is a very eloquent preacher, 
and a sweet poet. His works are not so well known 
among us as they ought to be. Mr. Everett has 
written some beautiful lines, and if I may Judge 
from the specimens of his speeches, as preserved 
in the volume entitled, 'Eloquence of the United 
States,' I should say that he shone more as a poet 
than an orator. But American fame has decided 
otherwise. 

''Mr. Flint, of Louisiana, has published a vol- 
ume of poems which ought to be naturalized here. 
Mr. Hallock, of New York, has much facility of versi- 
fication, and is greatly in fashion as a drawing 
room poet, but I think he has somewhat too much 
respect for himself, and too little for his readers. 

"It is, I think, Mr. Bryant who ranks highest 
as the poet of the Union. This is too lofty an emi- 
nence for me to attack, besides I am of another 
parish, and therefore, perhaps, no very fair judge. t 

^■- Jfs * 

"Mr. Paulding is a popular writer of novels; 
some of his productions have been recently repub- 
lished in England. Miss Sedgwick is also well 
known among us; her 'Hope Leslie' is a beautiful 
story. Mr. Washington Irving and Mr. Cooper have 
so decidedly chosen another field, whereon to reap 

tP. 288. 



Literature 319 

their laurels, that it is hardly necessary to name 
ihem here."* 

Concerning America's contribution of thought 
to the world, Carlyle expressed himself as follows: 

"Cease to brag to me of America, and its model 
institutions and constitutions. To men in their sleep 
there is nothing granted in this world ; nothing, or 
as good as nothing, to men that sit idly caucusing 
and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic an- 
cestors, saying: *It is well, it is well!' Com and 
bacon are granted ; not a very sublime boon, on 
such conditions; a boon moreover which, on such 
conditions, cannot last. No. America too will 
have to strain its energies, in quite other fashion 
than this; to crack its sinews, and all — but break 
its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thou- 
sand-fold wrestle with the Pythons and mud-de- 
mons, before it can become a habitation for the 
gods. America's battle is yet to fight; and we, 
sorrowful though nothing doubting, will wish her 
strength for it. New spiritual Pythons, plenty of 
them ; enormous Magatherions, as ugly as Avere 
ever born of mud, loom high and hideous out of the 
twilight future on America ; and she will have her 
own agony, and her own victory, but on other 
terms than she is yet quite aware of. Hitherto she 
but ploughs and hammers, in a very successful 
manner; hitherto, in spite of her 'roast goose with 
apple sauce,' she is not much. 'Roast goose with 
apple sauce for the poorest workingman' : well, 
surely that is something, — thanks to your respect 

* ]}. 284. 



320 Democracy In America 

for the street constable, and to your continents of 
fertile waste land; — but that, even if it could con- 
tinue, is by no means enough; that is not even an 
instalment towards what will be required of you. 
My friend, brag not yet of our American cousins! 
Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry and re- 
sources, I believe to be almost unspeakable ; but I 
can by no means worship the like of these. What 
great human soul, what great thought, what great 
noble thing that one could worship, or loyally ad- 
mire, has yet been produced there? None; the 
American cousins have yet done none of these 
things. 'What have they done?' growls Smel- 
fungiis, tired of the subject; *they have doubled 
their population every twenty years. They have 
begotten, with a rapidity bej^ond recorded example, 
eighteen million of the greatest bores ever seen in 
this world before, — that hitherto is their feat in 
history!' And so we leave them, for the present; 
and cannot predict the success of Democracy, on 
this side of the Atlantic, from their example."* 

Before Carlyle scribbled these lines, the Amer- 
icans had had some ''wrestle with the Pythons and 
mud-demons," and had induced the gods, occasion- 
ally at least, to glance down upon them. His main 
thesis, is however, sound, and no people can pro- 
duce a great literature except through a prolonged 
and heroic battle with the "spiritual pythons" and 
"megatherions" that encumber the human path- 
way. 



* Latter Day Pamphlets. 



Literature 321 

Munsterberg, in a more recent estimate of 
American literature, gives due credit to Washing- 
ton Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Miss Sedgwick 
and Bryant, and then speaks of the ''brilliant period 
commenced in the thirties, when Hawthorne, Emer- 
son, Holmes, Longfellow, Thoreau, Curtis and Mar- 
garet Fuller, all of New England, became the lumi- 
naries of the literary New World. And like the 
prelude to a great epoch rings the song of the one 
incomparable Edgar Allen Poe, who did not fight 
for ideas like a moral New Englander, but sang 
simply in the love of song. Poe's melancholy, de- 
moniacal, and melodious poetry was a marvellous 
fountain in the country of hard and sober work. 
And Poe was the first whose fantasy transformed 
the short story into a thing of the highest poetical 
form. In New England no one was so profoundly 
a poet as Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of 'The 
Scarlet Letter.' His 'Marble Faun,' of which the 
scene is laid in Italy, may show him in his fullest 
maturity, but his greatest strength lay in the ro- 
mances of Massachusetts, w^hich in their emotional 
impressiveness and artistic finish are as beautiful 
as an autumn day in New England. Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, the rhapsodical philosopher, wrote poems 
teeming over with thought, and yet true poems, 
while Whittier was the inspired bard of freedom ; 
and besides these there was the trio of friends. 
Longfellow, Lowell and Holmes. Harvard protes- 
sors they w^ere, and men of distinguished ability, 
whose literary culture made them the proper edu- 
cators of the nation. Thomas Wentworth Higgin- 



322 Democracy In America 

son is the only one of the circle now living, remain- 
ing over, as it were, from that golden age. He 
fought at first to free the slaves, and then he be- 
came the stout defender of the emancipation of 
women, and is today, as then, the master of the 
reflective essay. His life is full of cheerful yester- 
days; his fame is sure of confident tomorrows. 

"Longfellow is, to the German, mainly the 
sensitive transposer of German poetry; his sketch 
book, 'Hyperion,' opened up the German world of 
myth, and brought the German romance across the 
ocean. His ballads and his delightful idyll of 
'Evangeline' clothed New England life, as it were, 
in German sentiment; and even his Indian edda, 
'Hiawatha,' sounds as if from a German troubadour 
wandering through the Indian country. Longfel- 
low became the favorite poet of the American 
home, and American youth still makes its pilgrim- 
age to the house in Cambridge where he once lived. 
Lowell was perhaps more gifted than Longfellow, 
and certainly he was the more many-sided. His 
ai-t ranged from the profoundest pathos by which 
American patriotism was aroused in those days of 
danger, to the broadest and most whimsical humour 
freely expressed in dialect verses, 'The Biglow 
Papers,' to the highest place of typical literary pro- 
ductions of America ; nevertheless, his essential 
quality was fine and academic. Real American 
humour undoubtedly finds its truer expression in 
Holmes. Holmes was a lyric poet, but his greatest 
work was the set of books by the 'Autocrat.' His 
.'Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,' has that serious 



Literature 323 

smile which makes world literature. It was the 
first of a long series, and at the writing he was a 
professor of anatomy, sixty-four years old. 

"Then there were many lesser lights round 
these great ones. At the middle of the century 
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her 'Uncle Tom's 
Cabin,' of which ten thousand copies were sold 
every day for several months. And romance liter- 
ature in general began to increase. At the same 
time appeared the beautiful songs of Bayard Tay- 
lor, whose later translation of Faust has never been 
surpassed, and the scarcely less admirable lyrics of 
Stedman and Stoddard. So it happened that at the 
time when the Civil War broke out, America, al- 
though deficient in every sort of productive science 
except history, had a brilliant literature. Science 
needed, first of all, solid academic institutions, 
which could only be built patiently, stone on stone 
— a work which has been witnessed by the last 
three decades of the century. Poetry, however, 
needed only the inner voice which speaks to the 
susceptible heart, and the encouragement of the 
people. For science there has been a steady, quiet 
growd:h, parallel with the growth of the institu- 
tion ; for letters there has been changing fortunes, 
times of prosperity and times of stagnation. When 
the powder and smoke of the Civil War had blown 
away the happy days of literature were over; it 
began to languish, and only at the present day is 
it commencing to thrive once more. 

''This does not mean that there has been no 
talent for three decades, or that the general inter- 



324 Democracy In America 

est in literature has flagged. Ambitious writers of 
romance like Howells, James, Crawford, and Cable ; 
novelists like Aldrich, Bret Harte, and Hale, Mar\^ 
Wilkins, and Sarah Orne Jewett; poets like Lanier 
and Whitman, and humourists like Stockton and 
Mark Twain, have done much excellent work, and 
work that is partly gteat, and have shown the way 
to larger provinces of literary endeavor."* 

Discussing the recent development of a litera- 
ture which especially interprets American life, 
William Archer says that, ''not only the national 
but the local self-consciousness of America has 
sprung to literary life, until at the present day 
there is scarcely a corner of the country, scarcely 
an aspect of social life, that has not found its spe- 
cial, and, as a rule, very able interpreter through 
the medium of fiction. Pursuing technical methods 
partly borrowed from abroad (from France rather 
than England), Americans have undertaken what 
c»ne is tempted to call a sociological ordnance- 
survey of the Republic from Main to Arizona, from 
Florida to Oregon. There is scarcely a human be- 
ing in the United States, from the Newport society 
bells to the 'greaser' of New Mexico, that has not 
his or her more or less faithful counterpart in fic- 
tion. No European country, so far as 1 know, has 
achieved anything like such comprehensive self- 
realization. Comprehensive, I say — not necessarily 
profound. Perhaps France in Balzac, perhaps 
Russia in Turgenieff and Tolstoi, found more 

* I). 468. 



Literature 325 

searching interpretation than America has found 
even in her host of novelists. But never, surely, 
was there a body of fiction that touched life at so 
many points, to mirror if not to probe it. And in 
many cases to probe it as well. 

"It would take a volume to criticise these writ- 
ers in any detail. I can attempt no more than a 
bald and imperfect enumeration. Miss Mary Wil- 
kins' studies of New England life are well known 
and appreciated in England, but the talent of Miss 
Sarah Orne Jewett is not suificiently recognized. 
In her 'Country of the Pointed Firs,' for example, 
there are whole chapters that rise to classical per- 
fection of workmanship. The novelists of the East- 
em cities, with Mr. Howells, a master craftsman, 
at their head, are of course numberless. For 
studies in the local life of New York nothing could 
be better than Professor Brander Matthews's 'Vig- 
nettes of Manhattan,' and other stories. Mr. Paul 
Leicester Ford's 'Honorable Peter Sterling' ; though 
antiquated in style, gives a remarkable picture of 
political life in New York. The Bowery boy is 
cleverly represented, so far as dialect at any rate 
is concerned, by Mr. E. V. Townsend in his 'Chim.- 
mie Fadden.' Even the Jewish and the Italian 
quarters of New York have their portraitists in fic- 
tion. Life in Washington has been frequently and 
ably depicted; for instance, in Mrs. Burnett's 
'Through One Administration.' Of the many inter- 
preters of the South I need only mention three: 
Mr. Cable, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page and Mr. 
Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree (Charles Egbert 



326 Democracy In America 

Craddock) has made the mountains of Tennessee 
her special province. Chicago has several novelists 
of her own ; for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author 
of 'The Cliff Dwellers/ Mr. Will Payne, and that 
close student of Chicago slang, Mr. George Ade, 
the author of 'Artie.' The Middle West counts such 
novelists as Miss 'Octave Thanet' and Mr. Hamlin 
Garland, whose 'Main Traveled Roads' contains 
some very remarkable work. The Far West is 
best represented, perhaps, in the lively and graphic 
sketches of Mr. Owen Wister; while California has 
novelists of talent in Miss Gertrude Atherton and 
Mr. Frank Norris. At least two Americans living 
abroad have made noteworthy contributions to this 
sociological survey of their native land; the late 
Mr. Harold Frederic, who has dwelt mainly with 
country life in New York State, and Miss Elizabeth 
Robins, whose picture, in 'The Open Question,' of a 
Southern family impoverished by the war, is ex- 
ceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the ut- 
most fidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the 
stage has borne a modest but not insignificant part 
in this movement of national self-portraiture. Mr. 
Augustus Thomas' 'Alabama' is a delightful picture 
cf Southern life, while Mr. James A. Heme's 'Shore 
Acres' takes a distinct place in literature of New 
England, his 'Griffith Davenport' in the literature 
of Virginia."* 

Matthew Arnold spoke in very high praise of 
Mark Twain. "Mark Twain's contributions to the 
work of self-realization," he says, "have been hi 

'■' pp. 209-212. 



Literature 327 

the main retrospective, but nevertheless of the first 
importance. He is the 'sacred poet' of the Missis- 
sippi. If any work of incontestable genius, and 
plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued 
in the English language during the past quarter of 
a century, it is that brilliant romance of the Great 
River, 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' 

"Intensely American though he be, Mark 
Twain is one of the greatest living masters of the 
English language. To some Englishmen this may 
seem a paradox; but it is high time we should dis- 
abuse ourselves of the prejudice that residence on 
the European side of the Atlantic confers upon 
us an exclusive right to determine what is good 
English, and to write it correctly and vigorously." * 

The Americans have often been criticized for 
their tardiness in producing a literature. In reply 
to such criticism it is sufficient to say that they 
have not been at all tardy as compared to other 
countries. Among the Hebrews, Greeks, and Ro- 
mans three or four centuries elapsed before they 
had a literature, and a still longer period before 
there was a literature in England or France. Some 
excuse, for whatever slowness has characterized 
the growth of American literature, is found in the 
fact that they have had from the beginning more 
good books available from the older nations than 
they had time to read. It would hardly have been 
becoming, or edifying, or inspiring to the world if 
the Americans had put aside their forest-axes and 

* p. 212. 



328 Democracy In America 

devoted themselves to poetry. Indeed, American 
literature has been coming on fast enough, how- 
ever much it may be deplored that its quality does 
not surpass all the rest of the literature of the 
world. 

In the transformation of the nations of the 
world from monarchy and aristocracy to various 
forms of democracy, there will be opened up new 
provinces of literature, and new standards of judg- 
ing it. It is not at all unlikely that much of the liter- 
ature of the past will be subject to a new appraise- 
ment. In regard to poetry, DeTocqueville thought 
that the subject-matter, which has chiefly charac- 
terized it in the past, is found in the richest variety 
among artistocratic peoples, and that, while dem- 
ocracy dries up all the old springs of idealism, it 
(•pens up new and more ennobling ones; that de- 
mocracy turns the ej^e of the poet away from the 
external aspects of life to the inner springs of hu- 
man nature. He says: "Various different significa- 
tions have been given to the word "poetry.'' It 
would weary my readers if I were to lead them 
into a discussion as to which of these definitions 
ought to be selected. I prefer telling them at once 
that which I have chosen. In my opinion, poetry 
is the search and the delineation of the ideal. The 
poet is he who, by suppressing a part of what ex- 
ists, by adding some imaginary touches to the pic- 
ture, and by combining certain real circumstances, 
but which do not in fact concurrently happen, com- 
pletes and extends the work of nature. Thus the 
object of poetry is not to represent what is true, 



Literature 329 

but to adorn it, and to present to the mind some 
loftier imagery. Verse, regarded as the ideal 
beauty of language, may be eminently poetical ; 
but verse does not, of itself, constitute poetry. 

"I now proceed to inquire whether, amongst 
the actions, the sentiments, and the opinions of 
democratic nations, there are any which lead to a 
conception of ideal beauty, and which may for this 
reason be considered as natural sources of poetry. 
It m.ust, in the first place, be acknowledged that the 
taste for ideal beauty, and the pleasure derived 
from the expression of it, are never so intense or 
so diffused amongst a democratic as amongst an 
aristocratic people."* 

**But in democracies the love of physical grati- 
fication, the notion of bettering one's conditions, the 
excitement of competition, the charm of anticipated 
success, are so many spurs to urge men onwards 
in the active professions they have embraced, with- 
out allowing them to deviate for an instant from 
the track. The main stress of the faculties is to 
this point. The imagination is not extinct; but its 
chief function is to devise what may be useful, and 
to represent what is real. 

**The principle of equality not only diverts 
men from the description of ideal beauty — it also 
diminishes the number of objects to be described. 
Aristocracy, by maintaining society in a fixed posi- 
tion, is favorabe to the solidity and duration of 
positive religions, as well as to the stability of po- 
litical institutions. It not only keeps the human 

* TI. 75. 



330 Democracy In America 

mind within a certain sphere of belief, but it pre- 
disposes the mind to adopt one faith rather than 
another. An aristocratic people will always be 
prone to place intermediate powers between God 
and man. In this respect it may be said that the 
aristocratic element is favorable to poetry."! -^ * * 

'*In democratic ag"es it sometimes happens, on 
the contrary, that men are as much afloat in mat- 
ters of belief as they are in their laws. Scepticism 
then draws the imagination of poets back to earth, 
and confines them to the real and visible world. 
Even when the principle of equality does not dis- 
turb religious belief, it tends to simplify it, and 
to divert attention from secondary agents, to fix 
it principally on the Supreme Power. Aristocracy 
naturally leads the human mind to the contempla- 
tion of the past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on 
the contrary, gives men a sort of instinctive distaste 
for what is ancient. In this respect aristocracy is 
far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly 
grow larger and more obscure as they are more 
remote ; and for this two-fold reason they are bet- 
ter suited to the delineation of the ideal. 

"After having deprived poetry of the past, the 
principle of equality robs it in part of the present. 
Amongst aristocratic nations there are a certain 
number of privileged personages whose situation 
is, as it were, without and above the condition of 
man ; to these, power, wealth, fame, wit, refine- 
ment, and distinction in all things appear peculiarly 

t TT. 7f!. 



Literature 331 

to belong. The crowd never sees them very closely, 
or does not watch them in minute details; and 
little is needed to make the description of such men 
poetical. On the other hand, amongst the same 
people, you will meet with classes so ignorant, low, 
and enslaved, that they are no less fit objects for 
poetry from the excess of their rudeness and wretch- 
edness, than the former are from their greatness 
and refinement. Besides, as the different classes 
of which an aristocratic community is composed are 
widely separated, and imperfectly acquainted with 
each other, the imagination may always represent 
them with some addition to, or some subtraction 
from, what they really are. In democratic com- 
munities, where men are all insignificant and very 
much alike, each man instantly sees all his fellows 
when he surveys himself. The poets of democratic 
ages can never, therefore, take any man in par- 
ticular as the subject of a piece; for an object of 
slender importance, which is distinctly seen on all 
sides, will never lend itself to an ideal conception. 
Thus the principle of equality, in proportion as it 
has established itself in the world, has dried up 
most of the old springs of poetry. Let us now at- 
tempt to show what new ones it may disclose. 

"When scepticism had depopulated heaven, 
and the progress of equality had reduced each in- 
dividual to smaller and better known proportions, 
the poets, not yet aware of what they could sub- 
stitute for the great themes which were departing 
together with the aristocracy, turned their eyes to 
inanimate nature. As they lost sight of gods and 



332 Democracy In America 

heroes, they set themselves to describe streams and 
mountains. Thence originated in the last century, 
that kind of poetry Which has been called, by way 
of distinction, the descriptive. Some have thought 
that this sort of delineation, embellished with all 
the physical and inanimate objects which cover the 
earth, was the kind of poetry peculiar to demo- 
cratic ages; but I believe this to be an error, and 
that it only belongs to a period of transition. 

. '*I am persuaded that in the end democracy 
diverts the imagination from all that is external to 
man, and fixes it on m.an alone. Democratic na- 
tions may amuse themselves for a while with con- 
sidering the productions of nature; but they are 
only excited in reality by a survey of themselves. 
Here, and here alone, the true sources of poetry 
amongst such nations are to be found; and it may 
be believed that the poets who shall neglect to draw 
their inspirations hence, will lose all sway over the 
minds which they would enchant, and will be left 
in the end with none but unimpassioned spectators 
of their transports. I have shown how the ideas 
of progression and of the indefinite perfectibility 
of the human race belong to democratic ages. 
Democratic nations care but little for what has been, 
but they are haunted by visions of what will be; 
in this direction their unbounded imagination grows 
and dilates beyond all measure. Here then is the 
wildest range open to the genius of poets, which 
allow^s them to remove their performances to a 
sufficient distance from the eye. Democracy shuts 
the past against the poet, but opens the future be- 



Literature 333 

fore him. As all the citizens who compose a demo- 
cratic community are nearly equal and alike, the 
poet cannot dwell upon any one of them; but the 
nation itself invites the exercise of his powers. The 
general similitude of individuals, which renders 
any one of them taken separately an improper sub- 
ject of poetry, allows poets to include them all in 
the same imagery, and to take a general survey of 
the people itself. Democratic nations have a clear- 
er perception than any others of their own aspect; 
and an aspect so imposing is admirably fitted to 
the delineation of the ideal.'* * 

"In aristocratic ages each people, ap well as 
each individual, is prone to stand separate and 
aloof from all others. In democratic ages, the ex- 
treme fluctuations of men and the impatience of 
their desires keep them perpetually on the move; 
so that the inhabitants of different countries inter- 
mingle, see, listen to, and borrow from each other's 
stores. It is not only then the members of the 
same community who grow more alike; communi- 
ties are themselves assimilated to one another, and 
the whole assemblage presents to the eye of the 
spectator one vast democracy, each citizen of 
which is a people. This displays the aspect of man- 
kind for the first time in the broadest light. All 
that belongs to the existence of the human race 
taken as a whole, to its vicissitudes and to its fu- 
ture, becomes an abundant mine of poetry. The 
poets who lived in aristocratic ages have been emi- 
nently successful in their delineations of certain 

'^ II. 7S. 



331 Democracy In America 

incidents in the life of a people or a man ; but none 
of them ever ventured to include within his per- 
formances the destinies of mankind — a task which 
poets writing in democratic ages may attempt. At 
that same time at which every man, raising his eyes 
above his country, begins at length to discern man- 
kind at large, the Divinity is more and more mani- 
fest to the human mind in full and entire majesty. 
If in democratic ages faith in positive religions 
be often shaken, and the belief in intermediate 
agents, by whatever name they are called, be over- 
cast; on the other hand men are disposed to con- 
ceive a far broader idea of Providence itself, and 
its interference in human affairs assumes a new and 
more imposing appearance to their eyes. Looking 
at the human race as one great whole, they easily 
conceive that its destinies are regulated by the 
same design; and in the actions of every individual 
they are led to acknowledge a trace of that uni- 
versal and eternal plan on which God rules our 
race. This consideration may be taken as another 
prolific source of poetry which is opened in demo- 
cratic ages. Democratic poets will always appear 
trivial and frigid if they seek to invest gods, de- 
mons, or angels, with corporeal forms, and if they 
attempt to draw them down from heaven to dispute 
the supremacy of earth. But if they strive to con- 
nect the great events they commemorate with the 
general providential designs which govern the uni- 
verse, and, without showing the finger of the Su- 
preme Governor, reveal the thoughts of the Su- 
preme Mind, their works will be admired and un- 



Literature 335 

derstood, for the imagination of their contempo- 
raries takes this direction of its own accord. 

"It may be foreseen in like manner that poets 
living in democratic ages will prefer the delinea- 
tion of passions and ideas to that of persons and 
achievements. The language, the dress, and the 
daily actions of men in democracies are repugnant 
to ideal conceptions. These things are not poetical 
in themselves; and, if it were otherwise, they would 
cease to be so, because they are too familiar to all 
those to whom the poet would speak of them. This 
forces the poet constantly to search below the ex- 
ternal surface which is palpable to the senses, in 
order to read the inner soul; and nothing lends 
itself more to the delineation of the ideal than the 
scrutiny of the hidden depths in the immaterial na- 
ture of man. I need not to ramble over earth and 
sky to discover a wondrous object woven of con- 
trasts, of greatness and littleness infinite, of intense 
gloom and of amazing brightness — capable at once 
of exciting pity, admiration, terror, contempt. I 
find that object in myself. Man springs out of 
nothing, crosses time, and disappears forever in 
the bosom of God; he is seen but for a moment, 
staggering on the verge of the two abysses, and 
there he is lost. If man were wholly ignorant of 
himself, he would have no poetry in him: for it is 
impossible to describe what the mind does not con- 
ceive. If man clearly discerned his own nature, his 
imagination would remain idle, and v/ould have 
nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of 
man is sufficients disclosed for him to apprehend 



336 Democracy In America 

something of himself; and sufficiently obscure for 
all the rest to be plunged in thick darkness, in 
which he gropes forever — and forever in vain — to 
lay hold on some completer notion of his being. 

"Amongst a democratic people poetry will not 
be fed with legendary lays or the memorials of old 
traditions. The poet will not attempt to people the 
universe with supernatural beings in whom his 
readers and his own fancy have ceased to believe: 
nor will he present virtues and vices in the masK 
of frigid personification, which are better received 
under their own features. All these resources fail 
him ; but Man remains, and the poet needs no more. 
The destinies of mankind — man himself, taken 
aloof from his age and his country, and standing 
in the presence of Nature and of God, with his pas- 
sions, his doubts, his rare propensities, and incon- 
ceivable wretchedness — will become the chief, if 
not the sole theme of poetry amongst these nations. 
Experience may confirm this assertion, if we con- 
sider the production of the greatest poets who have 
appeared since the world has been turned to dem- 
ocracy. The authors of our age who have so ad- 
mirably delineated the features of Faust, Childe 
Harold, Rene, and Jocelyn, did not seek to record 
the actions of an indi\adual, but to enlarge and to 
throw light on some of the obscurer recesses of the 
human heart. Such are the poems of democracy. 
The principle of equality does not then destroy all 
the subjects of poetry; it renders them less numer- 
ous, but more vast."t * * * 

t II. 81. 



Literature 337 

•*We have just seen that amongst democratic 
nations, the sources of poetry are grand, but not 
abundant. They are soon exhausted; and poets, 
not finding the elements of the ideal in what is 
real and true, abandon them entirely and create 
monsters. I do not fear that the poetry of demo- 
cratic nations will prove too insipid, or that it will 
fly too near the ground; I rather apprehend that 
it will be forever losing itself in the clouds, and 
that it will range at last to purely imaginary re- 
gions. I fear that the productions of democratic 
poets may often be surcharged with immense and 
incoherent imagery, with exaggerated descriptions 
and strange creations; and that the fantastic be- 
ings of their brain may sometimes make us regret 
the world of reality."* 

* II, 83. 



CHAPTER XX. 
THE PRESS. 

THE NEWSPAPER IS NECESSARY TO ALL ASSOCIATED 
ACTION IN A DEMOCRACY— CONTRAST BETWEEN THE 
CHARACTER AND POWER OF NEWSPAPERS IN FRANCE 
AND THE UNITED STATES— DE TOCQUEVILLE 
THOUGHT THAT AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS WERE IN- 
FERIOR BECAUSE THEY WERE VERY NUMEROUS, 
WIDELY SCATTERED AND ATTRACTED ONLY MEN OF 
MEDIOCRE ABILITY— MtJNSTERBERG'S ESTIMATE OF 
THE PRESS OF TODAY— ITS INFLUENCE AND LITER- 
ARY QUALITY. 

In a democracy where the people are very 
numerous and occupy a large territory, the news- 
paper is an indispensable means of cultivating and 
preserving any common ideas, and of promoting 
common action. "The effect of a newspaper/' says 
De Tocqueville, '*is not only to suggest the same 
purpose to a great number of persons, but also to 
furnish means for executing in common the de- 
signs which they may have singly conceived. The 
principal citizens who inhabit an aristocratic coun- 
try discern each other from afar; and if they wish 
to unite their forces, they move towards each 
other, drawing a multitude of men after them. It 
frequently happens, on the contrary, in democratic 
countries, that a great number of men who wish or 
who want to combine cannot accomplish it, be- 

[338] 



The Press 339 

cause as they are very insignificant and lost amidst 
the crowd, they cannot see, and know not where 
to find, one another. A newspaper then takes up 
the notion or the feeling which had occurred 
simultaneously, but singly, to each of them. All 
are then immediately guided toward this beacon; 
and these wandering minds, which had long 
sought each other in darkness, at length meet and 
unite. 

"The newspaper brought them together, and 
the newspaper is still necessary to keep them 
united. In order that an association amongst a 
democratic people should have any power, it must 
be a numerous body. The persons of whom it is 
composed are therefore scattered over a wide ex- 
tent, and each of them is detained in the place of 
his domicile by the narrowness of his income, or 
by the small unremitting exertions by which he 
earns it. Means then must be found to converse 
every day without seeing each other, and to take 
steps in common without having met. Thus hardly 
any democratic association can do without news- 
papers. There is consequently a necessary con- 
nection between public associations and news- 
papers; newspapers make associations, and asso- 
ciations make newspapers; and if it has been cor- 
rectly advanced that associations will increase in 
number as the conditions of men tDecome more 
equal, it is not less certain that the number of 
newspapers increases in proportion to that of asso- 
ciations. Thus it is in America that we find at 



340 Democracy In America 

the same time the greatest number of associations 
and of newspapers."* 

"The extraordinary subdivision of administra- 
tive power has much more to do with the enor- 
mous number of American newspapers than the 
great political freedom of the country and the 
absolute liberty of the press. If all the inhabitants 
of the Union had the suffrage — but a suffrage 
which should only extend to the choice of their 
legislators in Congress — ^they would require but 
few newspapers, because they would only have to 
act together on a few very important but very rare 
occasions. But within the pale of the great asso- 
ciation of the nation, lesser associations have been 
established by law in every county, every city, and 
indeed in every village, for the purpose of local 
administration. The laws of the country thus 
compel every American to cooperate every day of 
his life with some of his fellow-citizens for a com- 
mon purpose, and each one of them requires a 
newspaper to inform him what all the others are 
doing."** 

The American newspapers contrast with the 
French in being more commercial, in giving less 
space to serious discussions, and in being widely 
scattered and therefore less conspicuous in their 
effect upon the public. "A single glance upon a 
French and an American newspaper," sajrs De 
Tocqueville, '*is sufficient to show the difference 
which exists between the two nations on this head. 
* II, i2n. ** II, 121. 



The Press 341 

In France the space allotted to commercial adver- 
tisements is very limited, and the intelligence is 
not considerable, but the most essential part of the 
journal is that which contains the discussion of the 
politics of the day. In America three-quarters of 
the enormous sheet which is set before the reader 
are filled with advertisements, and the remainder 
is frequently occupied by political intelligence or 
trivial anecdotes; it is only from time to time that 
one finds a corner devoted to passionate discus- 
sions like those which the journalists of France are 
wont to indulge their readers. 

"It has been demonstrated by observation, 
and discovered by the innate sagacity of the pet- 
tiest as well as the greatest of despots, that the 
influence of a power is increased in proportion as 
its direction is rendered more central. In France 
the press combines a two-fold centralization; al- 
most all its power is centered in the same spot, and 
vested in the same hands, for its organs are far 
from numerous. The influence of a public press 
thus constituted, upon a skeptical nation, must be 
unbounded. It is an enemy with which a Govern- 
ment may sign an occasional truce, but which it is 
difficult to resist for any length of time. 

"Neither of these kinds of centralization ex- 
ists in America. The United States have no me- 
tropolis; the intelligence as well as the power of 
the country are dispersed abroad, and instead of 
radiating from a point, they cross each other in 
everj^ direction. The Americans have established 



342 Democracy In America 

no central control over the expression of opinion, 
any more than over the conduct of business. 

"In America there is scarcely a hamlet which 
has not its own newspaper. It may be readily im- 
agined that neither discipline nor unity of design 
can be communicated to so multifarious a host, 
and each one is consequently led to fight under its 
own standard. All the political journals of the 
United States are indeed arrayed on the side of 
the administration or agairst it; but they attack 
and defend in a thousand different ways. They 
cannot succeed in forming those great currents of 
opinion which overwhelm the most solid ob- 
stacles."* 

The newspapers of America, in De Tocque- 
ville's time, because of their great number and 
their meager subsistence, attracted men of a rather 
low type of character and of inferior ability. *'The 
facility with which journals can be established," 
observed De Tocqueville, "induces a multitude of 
individuals to take a part in them; but as the ex- 
tent of competition precludes the possibility of con- 
siderable profit, the most distinguished classes of 
society are rarely led to engage in these under- 
takings. But such is the number of the public 
prints that, even if they are a source of wealth, 
writers of ability could not be found to direct them 
all. The journalists of the United States are 
usually placed in a very humble position, with a 
scanty education and a vulgar turn of mind. The 
will of the m.ajority is the most general of laws, 

* I. 187. 



The Press 343 

and it establishes certain habits which form the 
characteristics of each peculiar class of society; 
thus it dictates the etiquette practiced at courts 
and the etiquette of the bar. The characteristics 
of the French journalist consist in a violent, but 
frequently an eloquent and lofty, manner of dis- 
cussing the politics of the day; and the exceptions 
to this habitual practice are only occasional. The 
characteristics of the American journalist consist 
in an open and coarse appeal to the passions of the 
populace ; and he habitually abandons the prin- 
ciples of political science to assail the characters 
of individuals, to track them into private life, and 
disclose all their weaknesses and errors. * * * 

"The personal opinions of the editors have no 
kind of weight in the eyes of the public ; the only 
use of a journal is, that it imparts the knowledge 
of certain facts, and it is only by altering or dis- 
torting those facts that a journalist can contribute 
to the support of his own views. 

**But although the press is limited to these 
resources, its influence in America is immense. It 
is the power which impels the circulation of polit- 
ical life through all the districts of that vast terri- 
tory. Its eye is constantly open to detect the 
secret springs of political design, and to summon 
the leaders of all parties to the bar of public 
opinion. * * * When a great number of the organs 
of the press adopt the same line of conduct, their 
influence becomes irresistible; and public opinion, 
when it is perpetually assailed from the same side, 
eventually yields to the attack. In the United 



344 Democracy In America 

States each separate journal exercises but little 
authority, but the power of the periodical press is 
only second to that of the people,"* 

Foreign observers of more recent date seem 
to think as little of American newspapers as De 
Tocqueville. Freeman asserts that *'The American 
newspaper represents a level of American life 
lower than the level of English life, which is repre- 
sented by the English newspaper/' ** When 
Anthony Trollope returned from his voyage around 
the world, he said he had come to the conclusion 
that only an Englishman could turn out a respect- 
able newspaper. Commenting upon this statement, 
Emily Faithfull remarks that, "While it may be true 
that the rough-and-ready bundle of news is chiefly 
in demand in the United States, I cannot subscribe 
to Mr. Trollope's sweeping assertion, nor do I be- 
lieve he would have uttered it in the year of grace 
1884. Some of the daily newspapers now published 
in the chief cities of America will be freely ac- 
knowledged by the unprejudiced critic as worthy 
peers of their foreign rivals. In some particulars, 
it must be allowed that they excel them. The 
American press has undoubtedly vindicated its 
claim to be the best in the world in the direction of 
enterprise." f 

Of the American newspapers, Matthew Ar- 
nold says: *T.ut on the whole, and taking the 
total impression and effect made by them, I should 
say that if one were searching for the best means 

•I, 188. **p. 252. tP. 350. 



The Press 346 

to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline 
of respect, the feeling for what is elevated, one 
could not do better than take the American news- 
papers. The absence of truth and soberness in 
thenij the poverty in serious interest, the person- 
ality and sensation mongering are beyond belief."* 

Dickens gives us somewhat his idea of Amer- 
ican newspapers in his description of the landing 
of Martin Chuzzlewitz in New York about 1843. 
Martin was besieged by newsboys. 

"Here's this morning's New York Sewer!" 
cried one. ''Here's this morning's New York Stab- 
ber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's 
the New York Private Listener! Here's the New 
York Peeper! Here's the New York Plunderer! 
Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's 
the New York Rowdy Journal! * * * 

"Here's the Sewer!" cried another. "Here's 
the New York Sewer! * * a full account of the 
ball at Mrs. White's last night, where all the 
beauty and fashion of New York was assembled ; 
with the Sewer's own particulars of the private 
lives of all the ladies that was there. * * * and 
the Sewer's exposure of the Washington gang, and 
the Sewer's exclusive account of a flagrant act of 
dishonesty by the Secretary of State when he was 
eight years old; now communicated, at great ex- 
pense, by his own nurse." 

Herbert Spencer heartily disapproved of the 
Inquisitiveness of the American newspaper. "The 

*p. 177. 



346 Democracy In America 

trait I refer to," he says, "comes out in various 
ways. It is shown by the disrespectful manner 
in which individuals are dealt with in your jour- 
nals — the placarding of public men in sensational 
headings, the dragging of private people and their 
affairs into print. There seems to be a notion that 
the public have a right to intrude on private life 
as far as they like; and this I take to be a kind 
of moral trespassing." 

'Tor the interviewer," says Paul Bluet, "noth- 
ing is sacred. Audacity is his stock in trade; the 
most private details of your daily life are at his 
mercy, and unless you blow^ his brains out — which 
is not lawful in New York — you have no means of 
getting rid of him."* 

Emily Faithfull, who visited the United States 
in 1883, did not find that newspaper reporters 
were inclined to abuse their privileges or infringe 
upon the rights of the person interviewed. "In 
many cases," she says, "I fell into the hands of 
ladies, who were widely employed in this w^ork, 
and I was often astonished at the infinite tact and 
kindness shown by their admirable reports of hur- 
ried conversations and my crude impressions of the 
city I had just reached. I may have my views 
about the system, but there are not two opinions 
about the consideration I received at the hands of 
American interviewers of both sexes. "t 

Miinsterberg speaks of the interview as a dis- 
tinctly American invention, and has a good word 
to say for the interviewer. "Any one familiar with 

*P. 147. tP. 363. 



The Press 347 

the newspapers of the country knows that he is 
perfectly safe in telling any editor, and even any 
reporter, whatever he likes if he adds the caution 
that he does not want it given out. It will not be 
printed. The American journalist is usually a 
gentleman, and can be relied on xo be discreet."* 

Of present-day newspapers, Miinsterberg says: 
"Bold as the statement may sound, the American 
newspaper is the main ally of public opinion, serv- 
ing that opinion mxOre loyally than it serves either 
official politics or the party spirit. * * * a^^ 
American philosophizing on the niewspapers takes 
it as a matter of course that they serve the ends of 
party politics; and it is true enough that party life 
as it is would not be possible without the highly 
disseminated influence of the newspaper. A Ger- 
man coming to the country is apt to deny it even 
this useful function. He is acquainted in Europe 
with those newspapers which commence on the 
first page with serious leading articles, and rele- 
gates the items of the day to a back page along 
with the advertisements. But here he finds news- 
papers which have on the first page not a word of 
editorial comment and not even a serious piece of 
politics — nothing, in fact, but an unspeakable mud- 
dle of undigested news items: and as his eyes rest 
involuntarily on the front page, with its screaming 
headlines in huge type, he will find nothing but 
crimes, sensational casualties, and other horrors. 
He will not before have realized that the devouring 

* p. 152. 



348 Democracy In America 

hunger of the American populace for the daily 
news, has brought into existence sheets of large 
circulation adapted to the vulgar instincts of the 
millions, the giant headlines of which warn off the 
educated reader from as far as he can see them; 
that paper is not for him. But a foreigner does 
not realize the injustice of estimating the political 
influence of the press from a glance at those mon- 
strosities, which could not thrive abroad, not so 
much because the masses are better and more en- 
lightened as because they care less about reading. 
Moreover, he will come slowly to realize that what 
he missed from the front page is somewhere in 
the middle of the paper; that the street selling 
makes it necessary to make the most of sensations 
on the outside, and to put the better things where 
they are better protected. And so he learns that 
the American newspaper does express opinions, 
although its looks belie it. 

"The better sort of newspaper is neither a 
party publication nor yet merely a news-sheet, but 
the conscious exponent of public opinion. Its col- 
umns contain a tiresome amount of party informa- 
tion, it is true; but a part of this is directly in the 
interests of an intelligent public opinion, since 
every citizen needs to be instructed in all the 
phases of party life, of political and congressional 
doings, and in regard to the candidates who are up 
for office. It is to be admitted, moreover, that 
some of the better newspapers are under the domi- 
nation of certain industrial interests and cater to 
the wishes of a group of capitalists. But any such 



The Press 349 

policy has to be managed with the utmost discre- 
tion, for the American newspaper reader is far 
too experienced to buy a sheet day after day which 
he sees to be falsified; and he has enough others 
to resort to, since the competition is always keen, 
and even middle-sized cities have three or four 
large daily papers. 

**It is perhaps fortunate that any such extreme 
one-sidedness is not to the commercial advantage 
of the newspapers, for in America they are pre- 
eminently business enterprises. Their financial suc- 
cess depends in the first place on advertisements, 
and only secondarily on their sales in the streets. 
The advertising firm does not care whether the edi- 
torials and news items are Republican or Demo- 
cratic, but it cares very much about the number 
of copies which are circulated; and this depends 
on the meritorious features which the paper has 
over competing sheets. Newspapers like the Ger- 
man, which count only on a small circle of read- 
ers, and these assured, at least for time being, by 
subscriptions, can far more readily treat their 
readers cavalierly and constrain their attention for 
a while to a certain party point of view. In an 
American city the daily sales are much greater than 
the subscriptions, and the sheets which get the 
most trade are those which habitually treat mat- 
ters from all sides, and voice opinions which fall in 
with every point of view. Of course, this circum- 
stance cannot prevent every paper from having its 
special political friends and foes, its special hobbies, 
its own style, and, above all, its peculiar material 



350 Democracy In America 

interests. But, on the whole, the American news- 
paper is extraordinarily non-partisan on public ques- 
tions, notwithstanding the statements in many Ger- 
man books to the contrary; and the ordinary read- 
er might peruse a given paper for weeks, except 
just on the eve of an election, without really know- 
ing whether it was Republican or Democratic. Now 
one party and now the other is brought up for 
criticism, and even when a sheet is distinctly in 
favor of a certain side, it will print extracts from 
the leading articles of opposing journals, and so 
well depict the entire situation that the reader can 
form an opinion for himself. 

''While the newspapers are in this way largely 
emancipated from the yoke of parties, they are the 
exponents of a general set of tendencies which, in 
opposition to party politics, we have called public 
opinion. In other words, the papers stand above 
the parties with their crudely schematic pro- 
grammes and issues, and aspire to measure men 
and things according to their own worth. Though 
ostensibly of one party, a journal will treat men 9f J 
its own side to biting sarcasm, and magnanimously 
extol certain of its opponents. The better political 
instincts, progress and reform, are appealed to; 
and if doubtful innovations are often brought in 
and praised as reforms, this is not because the news- 
paper is the organ of a party, but rather of public 
sentiment, as it really is or is supposed to be. The 
newspaper reflects in its own way all the peculiar- 
ities of public opinion — its light-heartedness and its 
.often nervous restlessness, its conservative and pru- 



The Press 351 

dent traits, its optimism, and its ethical earnest- 
ness; above all, its humour and drastic ridicule. It 
is well known that the American newspaper has 
brought the art of political caricature to perfection. 
The satirical cartoon of the daily paper is of course 
much more effective than that of the regular comic 
papers. And these pictures, although directed at 
a political opponent, are generally conceived in a 
broader spirit than that of any party. The cap 
and bells are everywhere in evidence, and there is 
nothing dry or pedantic. From the dexterous and 
incisive leading article to the briefest jottings, one 
notes the same good humour and playful satire 

which are so characteristic of public opinion. "f 
* ♦ * 

"Taken all in all, the American press very 
worthily represents the energy, prosperity, and 
greatness of the American nation ; and at the same 
time with its superficial haste, its vulgarity and 
excitability, with its lively patriotism and irrepres- 
sible humour, it clearly evinces the influence of 
democracy. The better the paper the more promi- 
nent are the critical and reflective features; while 
the wider the circulation, the more noticeable are 
the obtrusive self-satisfaction and provincialism, 
and the characteristic disdain of things European. 
Going from the East to the West, one finds a fairly 
steady downward gradation in excellence, al- 
though some samples of New York journalism can 
vie for crude sensationalism with the most disgust- 
ing papers of the Wild West. And yet the best 

ip. 148. 



352 Democracy In America 

papers reach a standard which in many respects is 
higher than that of the best journals of the Old 
World. A paper like the Boston Transcript will 
hardly find its counterpart in the German news- 
paper world, and much good can be said of the Sun, 
Tribune, Times, and Post in New York, the Star 
in Washington, the Public Ledger in Philadelphia, 
the Sun in Baltimore, the Eagle in Brooklyn, the 
Tribune in Chicago, the Herald in Boston, the 
Evening Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and many others 
which might be named. Even sm.all cities like 
Springfield, Massachusetts, produce such large and 
admirable papers as the Springfield Republican.'' * 
Concerning the weekly publications, Miinster- 
berg goes on to say that "the political efforts of 
the weekly papers are mostly indirect: they deal 
primarily with practical interests, religious and 
social problems, and literary matters; but the seri- 
ous discussions are carried on as it were against 
a political background which lends its peculiar 
hue to the whole action. The monthly magazines 
are somewhat more ambitious, and consider poli- 
tics more directly. In their pages, not merely pro- 
fessional politicians, but the very ablest men of 
the. nation, are accustomed to treat of the needs 
and duties of city and state ; and these discussions 
are almost never from a one-sided point of view. 
A magazine like the North Amei^an Review 
usually asks representatives of both parties to pre- 
sent their opinions on the same question ; and a 
similar breadth of view is adopted by the Atlantic 

♦p. 152. 



The Press 353 

Monthly, the Review of Reviews, and other leading 
monthlies, whose great circulation and influence 
are hardly to be compared with similar magazines 
of Europe. The point of \dew common to all is 
that of a very critical public opinion, well above 
party politics and devoted to national reform and 
everything which makes for progress and en- 
lightenment. Much the same can be said of those 
magazines which combine politics with literature 
and illustrations, such as the Century, Harper's, 
Scribner's, McClure's, and many others. When 
McClure's Magazine, for example, presents to its 
half-million readers month after month an illus- 
trated history of the Standard Oil Trust, every 
page of which is an attack on secret evasions of 
the law, it is not serving the interests of any party, 
but is reading public opinion a lesson. ''t * * * 
"Apart from newspaper politics and apart 
from the admirable industrial organization of the 
newspaper, the newspapers of the country are a 
literary product whose high merit is too often 
under-estimated. The American newspapers, and 
of these not merely the largest, are an intellectual 
product of well-maintained uniformity of standard. 
* * * The American newspapers, from Boston to 
San Francisco, are alike in style and thought; and 
it must be said, in spite of all prejudice, that the 
American newspaper is certainly literature."* 

t p. 153. * p. 461. 



CHAPTER XXI. 
THE BENCH AND THE BAR. 

INQUIRY AS TO WHETHER THE BIAS OF THE LEGAL 
PROFESSION IS NOT IN FAVOR OF MONARCHY AS OP- 
POSED TO DEMOCRACY— UNDER DEMOCRACY IS NOT 
THE LEGAL CLASS THE ALLY OF THE RICH AND 
PRIVILEGED? IS IT NOT BY ATTACHMENT TO FORM- 
ALISM AND A FIXED ORDER ALWAYS REACTIONARY 
AND OPPOSED TO DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES? HAS 
IT NOT RECENTLY BECOME MORE OSSIFIED, AND 
LOST ITS INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL RANK AND 
POWER OF LEADERSHIP? 

The study of democracy in America would be 
very incomplete without a consideration of the 
influence of the legal profession upon democratic 
institutions. In every form of government the 
legal profession has been a powerful factor, not 
only in the preservation of order but in the de- 
termination of the character and direction of na- 
tional life. 

Without doubt the power of the legal profes- 
sion has been greater in America than in any oth- 
er country, for the reason that, aside from the min- 
istry, it has constituted the earliest and, for several 
centuries, the only learned class in the New World. 
It has occupied a rank somewhat like that of an 
aristocracy; and admittance to its rank has been 
the chief avenue to distinction and leadership. 

[354] 



The Bench and the Bar 355 

Has this class, which has for so long held sway 
in America, and enjoyed so many of the highest 
honors, been an influence favorable to the growth 
of liberty and democracy, or has it been over-con- 
servative and reactionary, retarding the universal 
trend towards popular sovereignty? 

In this present-day era of democratic upheaval, 
is the legal profession showing any ability to grasp 
the evolutionary trend, or exercising any function 
of leadership; or is it blocking every advanced 
step by clinging blindly to dead institutions and 
a worn-out philosophy? 

First of all, let us inquire if there is anything 
in the nature of the bench and bar to predispose 
its members to uphold an existing order, and to 
oppose innovation and progress. The affirmative 
of this inquiry is often asserted, and many facts, 
historical and contemporary, are cited to support 
it. For example, in England in the fourteenth 
century the peasants, oppressed by feudal exac- 
tions, complained that the lawyers interpreted in 
the interest of their oppressors. Therefore, on the 
occasion of the Wat Tyler Insurrection, the first 
act of the rabble, upon breaking through the gates 
of London, was to rush to Lincoln Field and burn 
down the lawyers' quarters. From that time to 
the present agitators for reform have frequently 
attacked the legal profession as inimical to their 
interest and as the unvarying ally of the rich and 
privileged class. 

In this connection De Tocqueville says that 
''Men who have more especially devoted them- 
selves to legal pursuits derive from those occupa- 



356 Democracy In America 

tions certain habits of order, a taste for formali- 
ties, and a kind of instinctive regard for the regu- 
lar connection of ideas, which naturally render 
them very hostile to the revolutionary spirit and 
the unreflecting passions of the multitude. 

"The special information which lawyers de- 
rive from their studies insures them a separate 
station in society, and they constitute a sort of priv- 
ileged body in the scale of intelligence. This no- 
tion of their superiority perpetually recurs to them 
in the practice of their profession: they are the 
masters of a science which is necessary, but which 
is not very generally known; they serve as arbiters 
between citizens; and the habit of directing the 
blind passions of parties in litigation to their pur- 
pose inspires them with a certain contempt for 
the judgment of the multitude. * * * ^ 

"A portion of the tastes and habits of the aris- 
tocracy may consequently be discovered in the 
character of the men in the profession of the law. 
They participate in the same instinctive love of 
order and of formalities;' and they entertain the 
same repugnance to the actions of the multitude, 
and the same secret contempt of the government 
of the people."* 

De Tocqueville points out, however, that the 
legal profession is not always on the side of the 
privileged class. "In a state of society," he says, 
"in which the members of the legal profession are 
prevented from holding that rank in the political 
world which they enjoy in private life, we may 
rest assured that they will be the foremost agents 

*I, 278. 



The Bench and the Bar 857 

of revolution. But it must then be inquired wheth- 
er the cause which induces them to innovate and 
to destroy is accidental, or whether it belongs to 
some lasting purpose which they entertain. It is 
true that the lawyers mainly contributed to the 
overthrow of the French monarchy in 1789 ; but 
it remains to be seen whether they acted thus be- 
cause they had studied the laws, or because they 
were prohibited from cooperating in the work of 
legislation. * * * 

"A privileged body can never satisfy the ambi- 
tion of all its members; it has always more talents 
and more passions to content and to employ than 
it can find places; so that a considerable number 
of individuals are usually to be met with who are 
inclined to attack those very privileges which they 
find it impossible to turn to their own account. 

*1 do not then assert that all the members of 
the legal profession are at all times the friends of 
order and the opponents of innovation, but mere- 
ly that the most of them are usually so. In a com- 
munity in which lawyers are allowed to occupy, 
without opposition, that high station which natur- 
ally belongs to them, their general spirit will be 
eminently conservative and anti-democratic. * * * 

"I am, in like manner, inclined to believe that 
a monarch will always be able to convert legal 
practitioners into the most serviceable instruments 
of his authority. There is a far greater affinity 
between the nobles and the monarch than between 
the nobles and the people, although the higher or- 
ders of society have occasionally resisted the pre- 



358 Democracy In America 

rogative of the Crown in concert with the lower 
classes."* 

The case against the lawyers, according to De 
Tocqueville, rests upon their veneration for the 
past, their emphasis on social stability, and their 
adherence to monarchy, aristocracy or whatever 
power represents established authority. 

All of these contentions may be admitted, 
however, without convicting the legal profession of 
any tendency to oppose progress or to act in any 
way different from other intellectual classes. Un- 
der a regime of monarchy or aristocracy, the legal 
class, like the ecclesiastical class, philosophic class 
or the men of letters, generally supports the pow- 
ers that be. If there are exceptions to this rule, 
in the case of the clergy, the philosophers, and men 
of letters, so there are exceptions in the case of 
lawyers. It is even true that the masses of people 
generally support whatever may be the constituted 
authority. 

In periods of revolution, when great masses 
of people are breaking with tradition and demand- 
ing reform, the lawyers are as well represented 
among the leaders as any other class, as witness 
the part they played in the American revolution 
of 1776, and the French revolution of 1789. 

Therefore the case against the lawyers seems 
to fall down completely in so far as it imputes to 
them any special tendency to favor monarchy or 
aristocracy as opposed to democracy. 

In the next place, let us ask if the legal pro- 
fession, under a democracy, is not, by taste and 

*I, 280. 



The Bench and the Bar 359 

natural attachment to precedent and to a fixed 
order, the inevitable opponent of progress; does 
it not thrive upon the rich and predatory class, 
and does it not always resist political and social 
reforms, and stand in the way of democratic tend- 
encies? In a democracy where all hereditary 
classes are abolished, do not the lawyers them- 
selves constitute the aristocratic class, and are 
they not therefore prone to set themselves against 
the stream of democratic tendencies? **In Ameri- 
ca," says De Tocqueville, "there are no nobles or 
men of letters, and the people is apt to mistrust 
the wealthy; lawyers consequently form the high- 
est political class, and the most cultivated circle of 
society. They have therefore nothing to gain by 
innovation, which adds a conservative interest to 
their natural taste for public order. If I were asked 
where I placed the American aristocracy, I 
should reply without hesitation that it is not com- 
posed of the rich, who are united together by no 
common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench 
and the bar.^'f * * * 

"The government of democracy is favorable 
to the political power of lawyers; for when the 
wealthy, the noble, and the prince are excluded 
from the government, they are sure to occupy the 
highest stations in their own right, as it were, since 
they are the only men of information and sagacity, 
beyond the sphere of the people, who can be the 
object of the popular choice. '** 

If a democracy offers to the legal profession 
a greater opportunity for distinction than any other 

tl, 283. *I, 280. 



360 Democracy In America 

form of government, it would be very great folly 
on its part not to be a genuine friend of that form 
of government. And since political distinction in 
a democracy must depend upon a sympathy with, 
and insight into, the masses, how could the legal 
profession furnish so many leaders, and fill so 
many places of honor, if it were the natural op- 
ponent of free institutions? Is not the iact that 
the common people so generally choose lawyers 
as their mouthpiece rather conclusive evidence that, 
as a class, lawyers are the friends and not the 
enemies of democracy? 

But, we may ask further, if political considera- 
tions bring some lawyers in sympathy with the 
masses, do they not as a class thrive upon power- 
ful vested interests, and therefore naturally share 
the antagonism of those interests to all democratic 
tendencies? 

"As to the influence of the rich," says Cooley, 
"over the professional classes — lawyers, doctors, 
clergymen, teachers, civil and mechanical engin- 
eers and the like — we may say in general that it 
is potent but somewhat indirect, implying not con- 
scious subservience but a moral ascendency through 
habit and suggestion. The abler men of this sort 
are generally educated and self-respecting, have a 
good deal of professional spirit and are not wholly 
dependent upon any one employer. At the same 
time, they get their living largely through the rich, 
from whom the most lucrative employment comes, 
and Who have many indirect ways of making and 
marring careers." * * * 



The Bench and the Bar 361 

"Now there is nothing in social psychology 
surer than that if there is a man by whose good 
will we desire to profit, we are likely to adapt our 
way of thinking to his. Impelled to imagine fre- 
quently his state of mind, and to desire that it 
should be favorable to our aims, we are uncon- 
sciously swayed by his thought, the more so if he 
treats us with a courtesy which does not alarm our 
self-respect. It is in this way that wealth imposes 
upon intellect. Who can deny it?" * 

Perhaps the worst that can be said of law- 
yers in this respect is that they are subject to the 
influences of a wealthy class to the same extent as 
clergymen, educators, or other intellectual classes, 
and not more so. We would do well to note, in any 
discussion of the influences of a wealthy class, 
that in the United States the possession of wealth 
is becoming less necessary as a means of unlock- 
ing the doors of opportunity, and that the influ- 
ence of wealth is on the decline, and perhaps has 
never been as great as the popular imagination 
has pictured it.f 

"When money was the only way to education," 
says Cooley, "to choice of occupation, to books, 
leisure and variety of intercourse, it was essen- 
tial to the intellectual life ; there was no belonging 
to the cultured class without it. But with free 
schools and libraries, the diffusion of magazines 
and newspapers, cheap travel, less stupefying la- 
bor and shorter hours, culture opportunity is more 
and more extended, and the best goods of life are 



• 270. t Cooley : Social Organization, Chapter XXTV. 



362 Democracy In America 

opened, if not to all, yet to an evergrowing pro- 
portion. Men of the humblest occupations can and 
do become gentlemen and scholars. Indeed, people 
are coming more and more to think that exclusive 
advantages are uncongenial to real culture, since 
the deepest insight into humanity can belong only 
to those v^ho share and reflect upon the common 
life. 

''The effect is that wealth is shorn of much of 
that prestige of knowledge, breeding and oppor- 
tunity which always meant more than its material 
power. The intellectual and spiritual center of 
gravity, like the political, sinks down into the 
masses of the people. Though our rich are rich 
beyond the dreams of avarice, they mean less to 
the inner life of the time, exercise less spiritual 
authority, perhaps, than the corresponding class 
in any older society."* 

I think that people generally have a mistaken 
notion of the kinship of interest between the rich 
and the lawyers. The latter, by reason of their be- 
longing to an intellectual class, do not have a close 
social or spiritual affinity with the men of wealth 
who are generally unlearned, and who possess tastes 
and habits not at all congenial to any intellectual 
class. Lawyers, no more than artists, scientists, 
or teachers, find congenial fellowship in the circles 
of the opulent, and, as in the case of the artists, 
scientists and teachers, the lawyers, for the most 
part, live for and amons: the common people. 

I think the real fact is th?t the lawyers, more 
than any other class, outside of the wage-workers 

*p. 279. 



The Bench and the Bar 363 

have natural affinities with the commonality. For 
every lawyer who has a rich client there are a hun- 
dred whose clients are of the humbler sort who are 
seeking redress of some wrong, and who are suf- 
fering from the injustices and inequalities of our 
imperfect humanity and institutions. It is in the 
law-office, better than anywhere else, that one 
gains an insight into the distresses and tragedies 
of human life, and comes to realize most clearly 
those imperfections of our social system which 
hamper, distort, and crush the individual. Hav- 
ing grown up in a legal atmosphere, and having 
had long and intimate acquaintance with the men 
of the bench and bar, I state it as my firm con- 
viction that there is no class, except the ministers 
of the gospel, who reflect more, and talk more, 
about what ought to be than the lawyers. 

Not only the men of the bar but those of the 
bench are brought in very close touch with the 
commonality. The men of the bench come to know 
the commonality through the jury and the audi- 
ences of the court-room, and in the court-room they 
see democracy at work in its most vital form. The 
power of the jury is always a measure of the self- 
governing power of a people. Under a monarchy 
or aristocracy the jury is never democratic, and al- 
ways exercises its function under limitations: 
whereas under a democracy the jury is the founda- 
tion of popular government, because it is th'^ in- 
strument of last resort for enforcing obedience 
to law. "Every American citizen/' says De Tocnue- 
ville. "is qualified to be an elector, a juror, and is 
eligible to office. The system of the jury, as it is 



364 Democracy In America 

understood in America, appears to me to be as di- 
rect and as extreme a consequence of the sover- 
eignty of the people as universal suffrage. These 
institutions are two instruments of equal power 
which contribute to the supremacy of the majority. 
All the sovereigns who have chosen to govern by 
their own authority, and to direct society instead 
of obeying its directions, have destroyed or en- 
feebled the institution of the jury. The monarchs 
of the House of Tudor sent to prison jurors who 
refused to convict, and Napoleon caused them to 
be returned by his agents."* 

The American jury is the most democratic of 
our institutions. It is subject to no class control, 
and represents and always shares the sentiments 
and mental bias of the masses. It is in association 
with these plain people, and in this democratic 
atmosphere, that the men of the bench and bar 
labor in the service of justice. Therefore no class 
of people have a better opportunity than lawyers 
to feel with the common people and to interpret 
their aspirations and ideals. 

On the other hand, the bench and the bar ex- 
ercise a highly ethical and democratizing influence 
upon the jury and the court audience. The testi- 
mony and pleadings before the bar, and the ex- 
positions and decisions of the bench, have the ef- 
fect of educating men to rightly estimate truth- 
fulness, fidelity to promise, and obedience to the 
will of the people. 

"In criminal causes," says De Tocqueville, 
"when society is armed against a single individual. 

*I, 288. 



The Bench and the Bar 365 

the jury is apt to look upon the judge as the pas- 
sive instrument of social power, and to mistrust his 
advice. Moreover, criminal causes are entirely 
founded upon the evidence of facts which common 
sense can readily appreciate; upon this ground the 
judge and the jury are equal. Such, however, is 
not the case in civil causes; then the judge ap- 
pears as a disinterested arbiter between the con- 
flicting passions of the parties. The jurors look up 
to him with confidence and listen to him with re- 
spect, for in this instance their intelligence is com- 
pletely under the control of his learning. It is the 
judge who sums up the various arguments with 
which their memory has been wearied out, and 
who guides them through the devious course of the 
proceedings; he points their attention to the exact 
question of fact which they are called upon to 
solve, and he puts the answer to the question of 
law into their mouths. His influence upon their 
verdict is almost unlimited. * * * 

"In some cases the American judges have the 
right of deciding causes alone. Upon these occas- 
tions they are accidentally placed in the position 
which the French judges habitually occupy, but 
they are invested with far more power than the 
latter; they are still surrounded by the reminis- 
cence of the jury, and their judgment has almost 
as much authority as the voice of the community 
at large, represented by that institution. Their 
influence extends beyond the limits of the court; in 
the recreations of private life as well as in the 
turmoil of public business, abroad and in the leg- 
islative assemblies, the American judge is constant- 



366 Democracy In America 

ly surrounded by men who are accustomed to re- 
gard his intelligence as superior to their *)wn, and 
after having exercised his power in the decision 
of causes, he continues to influence the habits of 
thought and the characters of the individual who 
took part in his judgment. * * * 

"It is more especially by means of the jury 
in civil cases that the American magistrates imoue 
all classes of society with the spirit of their pro- 
fession. Thus the jury, which is the most energetic 
means of making the people rule, is also the most 
efficacious means of teaching it to rule well."* 

The educative influences communicated to the 
jury are disseminated through it to the whole pop- 
ulation. ''The jury," says De Tocqueville, "con- 
tributes most powerfully to form the judgment 
and to increase the natural intelligence of a people, 
and this is, in my opinion, its greatest advantage. 
It may be regarded as a gratuitous public school 
ever open, in which every juror learns to exercise 
his rights, enters into daily communication with the 
most learned and enlightened members of the up- 
per classes, and becomes practically acquainted 
w'ith the laws of his country, which are brought 
within reach of his capacity by the efforts of the 
bar, the advice of the judge, and even by the pas- 
sions of the parties. I think that the practical in- 
telligence and political good sense of the Americans 
are mainly attributable to the long use which they 
have made of the jury in civil causes. I do not 
know whether the jury is useful to those who are 
in litigation; but I am certain it is highly beneficial 

» I, 291. 



The Bench and the Bar 367 

to those who decide the litigation; and I look upon 
it as one of the most efficacious means for the 
education of the people which society can em- 
ploy."* 

It is because of the intimate contact of the 
lawyers with the masses, and because they better 
interpret the spirit of the masses than any other 
class, that they are so often chosen to represent 
them in the halls of legislation. For instance, we 
would do well to remember, in connection with 
the many laws of the past century designed to 
ameliorate the lot of the laborer, protect him from 
accident, injury, and ill-health, and to protect the 
public against predatory corporations, that they 
were drafted by lawyers, championed by them, 
and placed on the statute books largely through 
their aggressiveness. 

No one will deny that among lawyers, as 
among other classes, there are friends of the rich 
and friends of the poor, extreme reactionaries and 
extreme radicals; but no one who looks squarely 
at the f^cts can accept the view very commonly cur- 
rent that lawyers as a class are servitors of privi- 
lege pTid foes of democracy. 

The notion that lawyers are especially inhos- 
pitable to change is based largely upon their dis- 
position to cling to old terms and forms of pro- 
cedure; but the fact is that this disposition has no 
necessai^v relation to a reacnonary state of mind, 
and. far f^'om bemg a peculiarity of lawyers, is 
more or less common to all professions and' trades 
reouiring education for admittance to its ranks. 

*I, 290. 



368 Democracy In America 

One can scarcely name a skilled or learned pursuit 
which has not a terminology known only to the 
initiated. The same motive which prompts the 
manufacturer to guard against the publicity of his 
secret processes and formulas also prompts the 
men of every trade and profession to perpetuate 
whatever terms or methods may be unfamiliar to 
the multitude. It is as irrational to assert that 
lawyers are the opponents of innovation because 
they hold to ancient forms as to assert that doc- 
tors are all opposed to the progress of medical sci- 
ence because they WTite prescriptions in a dead 
language. An attachment to anything old or tech- 
nical in connection with a trade or profession is 
entirely compatible with the most ardent love of 
novelty, experiment and progression. 

If the study and practice of law has any tend- 
ency to give a special bias to the men who enter 
that field, it is neither that of the reactionary nor 
of the radical. The lawyer's familiarity with laws, 
traditions, and institutions, on the one hand, ac- 
quaints him with their defects and outworn fea- 
tures, and inclines him to favor innovation; and 
on the other hand, enables him to better appreciate 
their value and importance for the present and the 
future, and inclines him to oppose ruthless change. 
Or, to state the case in other words, the bias of 
the legal profession is that of antagonism to two 
dangerous extremes in a democracy — conservatism 
and radicalism, and the chief function of the bench 
and the bar is that of harmonizing these extremes. 

"Lawyers,'' says De Tocqueville, "belong to 
the people by birth and interest, to the aristoc- 



The Bench and the Bar 369 

racy by habit and by taste, and they may be looked 
upon as the natural bond and connecting link 
of the two great classes of society. The profession 
of the law is the only aristocratic element which 
can be amalgamated without violence with the 
natural elements of democracy, and which can be 
advantageously and permanently combined with 
them. I am not acquainted with the defects which 
are inherent in the character of that body of men, 
but without this admixture of lawyer-like sobriety 
with the democratic principle, I question whether 
democratic institutions could be long maintained, 
and I cannot believe that a republic could subsist 
at the present time if the influence of lawyers in 
public business did not increase in proportion to the 
power of the people."* 

But, while admitting the invaluable service of 
the legal profession to a democracy, there are 
reasons for believing that, in recent years in the 
United States, it has not been exercising its func- 
tion with that advantage to the public and credit 
to itself which has generally characterized it. There 
seems to be a general opinion that, for some de- 
cades past, it has been becoming more conserva- 
tive as compared to the same profession in Eng- 
land and France, that it has been furnishing fewer 
men of distinguished leadership, and has been 
falling somewhat in intellectual and social rank. 

The decline in the intellectual and social rank 
of the legal profession is not due altogether to a 
decline in its personnel, but is due in large measure 
to a change in social conditions. In America, es- 

*I, 281. 



370 Democracy In America 

pecially, the general advance of culture has given 
rise to numerous new intellectual classes, and 
therefore the legal profession does not stand out 
so conspicuously as in former years. Also the gen- 
eral advance in culture, with its intensified stimula- 
tions, has given to society a very debilitated nervous 
organization, by reason of which the people have 
come to have an excitable and neuropathic temper- 
ament with an insatiable taste for the extravagant, 
the eccentric, the loud and the irrational. This 
is shown in jazz music, the sensational evangelism, 
the muck-rake literature, the cynical review, the 
revival of spiritualism, and every kind of radical- 
ism. In consequence of this neuropathic infirmity, 
the men of sanity and sobriety of temper, and of 
breadth and depth of view, are more and more 
relegated to the background, and find it harder to 
obtain a hearing. Hence the most capable men of 
the legal profession, as of every other, now labor 
under disadvantages not characteristic of the past, 
and must suffer in solitude or await a tardy recog- 
nition. 

In explanation of whatever decadence may 
have come about in the political and professional 
standing of lawyers, it may be said, in the first 
place, that the practice of law throughout the 
country has become so remunerative that the most 
talented of the profession cannot aflford to take up 
a political career. In the next place, the most 
talented men do not now go into the law to the 
same extent as in the past, because of the great 
opportunities offered in other fields. And lastly, 
the kind of educat^'on which a voun^ man now re- 



The Bench and the Bar 371 

ceives, as a preparation for the law, is not such as 
to develop men of a wide outlook upon life, or of 
a deep understanding of legal, political and social 
problems. A glance at the curriculum of a law school 
will show only a narrow and crowded series of 
courses dealing with the technique of the law. It 
provides for no knowledge of political science, eco- 
nomics, philosophy, sociology or other cultural 
study which should give to the lawyer a big grasp 
of the trend of evolution. Formerly the student got 
his broadening foundation in his carrer in college 
before he specialized in law; but now he enters 
the law school without having had anything more 
than a smattering of general culture. 

The case method of studying law has the ef- 
fect, as pointed out by Bryce, of cultivating an over- 
emphasis upon precedent, an extreme conservatism, 
and a dislike of general principles. ''Thus, (in 
America,)" says Bryce, *'one finds the same dislike 
to theory, the same attachment to old forms, the 
same unwillingness to be committed to any broad 
principle which distinguished the orthodox type of 
lawyers in the first half of the last century."* 

The recent more mediocre talent and narrow 
outlook which characterizes the legal profession of 
America have come to a glaring exhibition in a long 
series of legal decisions nullifying statutes made in 
conformity to an enlightened change in our con- 
ception of personal liberty. The trend of philos- 
ophy, as well as of general culture, has been away 
from that conception of liberty which disregards 
the general public, and towards that which exalts 

*II. 672. 



372 Democracy In America 

public rights above those of the individual. In 
lagging behind this trend, the American bench has 
handed down a list of decisions very remarkable 
for their time-worn and mouldy philosophy.* 

It is but fair to remark, however, that the re- 
actionary decisions in America have proceeded al- 
most entirely from the State courts. The Supreme 
Court has rarely laid itself liable to the charge of 
rendering decisions out of harmony with the most 
enlightened and progressive thought. The inferior- 
ity of the State bench is due not only to mediocre 
talent and poor education but to inadequate com- 
pensation, short and uncertain tenure of office, re- 
sulting from the election of the judges by ballot, 
and the subjecting of them to political influences. 
When the principle of the recall comes to be more 
generally applied to judges, the American bench 
will suffer a further debasement. 

To' sum up, there is nothing in the nature of 
the legal profession, or in its history, to justify 
the accusation that it is naturally inclined to favor 
a monarchy or aristocracy ; or that, under a democ- 
racy, it is the natural ally of wealth and privilege. 
On the contrary, it has played a conspicuous part 
in all of the great revolutions for the extension of 
human liberty. More than any other class it is 
brought in sympathetic relations with the humbler 
classes, and has the greatest opportunity to feel 
their impulses and to interpret their spirit. Be- 



•For example: Godcharles v. Wlgeman, 113 Pa. St. 431; State v. Haun, 61 
Kan. 146; Braceville Coal Co. v. People, 147 111. 66; Lochner, 198 U. 
S. 45; Ritchie v. People, 155 III. 98; Com. v. B. and M. R. R., 110 
N. & E. 264. 



The Bench and the Bar 373 

cause of this fact the masses so often find among 
the men of the legal profession their truest friends 
and wisest leaders. 

While in recent years the legal profession in 
America has become more reactionary, has played 
a diminishing role in politics, and has lost some- 
what in social rank and in sway over the masses, 
these results have not come about through any in- 
herent disharmony between a democracy and the 
study and practice of law. They are due to local 
causes already discussed and are susceptible to re- 
moval, and they are not now observable in England, 
France or other democratic country, except that the 
most sane men of the legal profession have a di- 
minishing opportunity for leadership. 

As civilization advances, with its increasing 
density of population and swiftness of communica- 
tion, it becomes more sensitive, like the nervous 
system of the individual, and is therefore more sub- 
ject to abnormal manifestations. The pathological 
and emotional tendencies gain over the rational, 
and society becomes more liable to be thrown out 
of its orbit by an alternating and eccentric pull of 
the centrifugal and centripetal forces. It there- 
fore comes more and more in need of a stabilizing 
and balancing mechanism which the legal profes- 
sion is especially fitted to supply. And it will be a 
fortunate day for the American bench and bar, 
and for the preservation of our democracy, when 
the legal profession is able to resume its tradi- 
tional rank and judicious leadership. 



CHAPTER XXII . 
THE DRAMA. 

THE DRAMA MORE DEMOCRATIC THAN ANY OTHER ART 
—CONTRAST BETWEEN THE DRAMA OF AN ARISTOC- 
RACY AND A DEMOCRACY— DEMOCRACY DEMANDS 
THEMES OF THE PRESENT DAY— THE DRAMA OF 
DEMOCRACY HAS INHERENT DEFECTS— THE AMERI- 
CAN DRAMA OF TODAY NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF 
AMERICAN CULTURE AND INFERIOR TO THAT OF 
EUROPEAN COUNTRIES- THE DRAMA NEEDS TO BE 
ENDOWED, LIKE THE UNIVERSITY, AND MADE EDU- 
CATIONAL. 

In the opinion of De Tocqueville, the drama is 
more democratic than any other art, because it can 
be appreciated alike by the educated and the un- 
educated, and because, appealing to all classes, its 
ideas and tastes have to be acceptable to the pit 
as well as to the boxes. In a democracy the drama 
has inherent literary defects, and the audience de- 
mands themes of the present and cares little for 
erudition. 

**The literature of the stage," says De Tocque- 
ville, "even amongst aristocratic nations, constitutes 
the most democratic part of their literature. No kind 
of literary gratification is so much within the reach 
of the multitude as that which is derived from the- 
atrical representations. Neither preparation nor 
study is required to enjoy them; they lay hold on 

1374] 



The Drama 375 

you in the midst of your prejudices and your ignor- 
ance. When the yet untutored love of the pleas- 
ures of the mind begins to affect a class of the 
community, it instantly draws them to the stage. 
The theatres of aristocratic nations have always 
been filled with spectators not belonging to the 
aristocracy. At the theatre alone the higher ranks 
mix with the middle and lower classes; there alone 
do the former consent to listen to the opinion of 
the latter, or at least to allow them to give an 
opinion at all. At the theatre, men of cultivation 
and of literary attainments have always had more 
difficulty than elsewhere in making their taste pre- 
vail over that of the people, and in preventing 
themselves from being carried away by the latter. 
The pit has frequently made laws for the boxes. 

''If it be difficult for an aristocracy to prevent 
the people from getting the upper hand in the 
theatre, it will readily be understood that the peo- 
ple will be supreme there when democratic prin- 
ciples have crept into the laws and manners — 
when ranks are intermixed — when minds, as well 
as fortunes, are brought more nearly together — 
and when the upper class has lost, with its heredi- 
tary wealth, its power, its precedents, and its 
leisure. The tastes and propensities natural to 
democratic nations, in respect to literature, will 
therefore first be discernible in the drama, and it 
may be foreseen that they will break out there 
with vehemence. In written productions, the lit- 
erary canons of aristocracy will be gently, grad- 



376 Democracy In America 

ually, and so to speak, legally modified; at the 
theatre they will be riotously overthrown. 

"The drama brings out most of the good qual- 
ities, and almost all the defects, inherent in demo- 
cratic literature. Democratic peoples hold erudi- 
tion very cheap, and care but little for what 
occurred at Rome and Athens; they want to hear 
something which concerns themselves, and the de- 
lineation of the present age is what they demand. 

"When the heroes and the manners of an- 
tiquity are frequently brought upon the stage, ana 
dramatic authors faithfully observe the rules of 
antiquated precedent, that is enough to warrant a 
conclusion that the democratic classes have not 
got the upper hand of the theatres." | * * * 

"A democratic stage does not prove that the 
nation is in a state of democracy, for, as we have 
just seen, even in aristocracies it may happen that 
democratic tastes affect the drama; but when the 
spirit of aristocracy reigns exclusively on the stage, 
the fact irrefragably demonstrates that the whole 
of society is aristocratic; and it may be boldly in- 
ferred that the same lettered and learned class 
which sways the dramatic writers commands the 
people and governs the country. 

"The refined tastes and the arrogant bearing 
of an aristocracy will rarely fail to lead it, when 
it manages the stage, to make a kind of selection 
in human nature. Some of the conditions of 
society claim its chief interest; and the scenes 
which delineate their manners are preferred on 

tll, 85. 



The Drama 377 

the stage. Certain virtues, and even certain vices, 
are thought more particularly to deserve to figure 
there ; and they are applauded whilst all others are 
excluded. Upon the stage, as well as elsewhere, 
an aristocratic audience will only meet personages 
of quality, and share the emotions of kings. The 
same thing applies to style; an aristocracy is apt 
to impose upon dramatic authors certain modes of 
expression which give the key in which everything 
is to be delivered. By this means the stage fre- 
quently comes to delineate only one side of man, 
or sometimes even to represent what is not to be 
met with in human nature at all — ^to rise above 
nature and to go beyond it. 

"In democratic communities the spectators 
have no such partialities, and they rarely display 
any such antipathies; they like to see upon the 
stage that medley of conditions, of feelings, and of 
opinions, which occurs before their eyes. The 
drama becomes more striking, more common, and 
more true. Sometimes, however, those who write 
for the stage in democracies also transgress the 
bounds of human nature — but it is on a different 
side from their predecessors. By seeking to rep- 
resent in minute detail the little singularities of the 
moment and the peculiar characteristics of certain 
personages, they forget to portray the general 
features of the race."t * * * 

"In democracies, dramatic pieces are listened 
to, but not read. Most of those who frequent the 
amusements of the stage do not go there to seek 

tll, 86. 



378 Democracy In America 

the pleasures of the mind, but the keen emotions of 
the heart. They do not expect to hear a fine lit- 
erary work, but to see a play; and provided the 
author writes the language of his country correctly 
enough to be understood, and that his characters 
excite curiosity and awaken sympathy, the audi- 
ence are satisfied. They ask no more of fiction, 
and immediately return to real life. Accuracy of 
style is therefore less required, because the atten- 
tive observance of its rules is less perceptible on 
the stage. As for the probability of the plot, it is 
incompatible with perpetual novelty, surprise, and 
rapidity of invention. It is therefore neglected, 
and the public excuses the neglect. You may be 
sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience 
into the presence of something that affects them, 
they will not care by what road you brought them 
there; and they will never reproach you for having 
excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules. 

"The Americans very broadly display all the 
different propensities which I have here described 
when they go to the theatres; but it must be ac- 
knowledged that as yet a very small number of 
them go to theatres at all. Although playgoers 
and plays have prodigiously increased in the 
United States in the last forty years, the popula- 
tion indulges in this kind of amusement with the 
greatest reserve. This is attributable to peculiar 
causes, which the reader is already acquainted 
with, and of which a few words will suffice to re- 
mind him. The Puritans who founded the Amer- 
ican republics were not only enemies to amuse- 



The Drama 379 

ments, but they professed an especial abhorrence 
for the stage. They considered it as an abomin- 
able pastime ; and as long as their principles pre- 
vailed with undivided sway, scenic performances 
were wholly unknown amongst them. These opin- 
ions of the first fathers of the colony have left very 
deep marks on the - minds of their descendants. 
The extreme regularity of habits and the great 
strictness of manners which are observable in the 
United States, have as yet opposed additional ob- 
stacles to the growth of dramatic art. There are 
no dramatic subjects in a country which has wit- 
nessed no great political catastrophes, and in which 
love invariably leads to a straight and easy road 
to matrimony. People who spend every day in the 
week in making money, and the Sunday in going 
to church, have nothing to invite the muse of com- 

**No portion of literature is connected by 
closer or more numerous ties with the present con- 
dition of society than the drama. The drama of 
one period can never be suited to the following 
age, if in the interval an important revolution has 
changed the manners and the laws of the nation. 
The great authors of a preceding age may be read ; 
but pieces written for a different public will not 
be followed. The dramatic authors of the past 
live only in books. The traditional taste of cer- 
tain individuals, vanity, fashion, or the genius of 
an actor may sustain or resuscitate for a time the 
aristocratic drama amongst a democracy, but it 

ill, 88. 



380 Democracy In America 

will speedily fall away of itself — not overthrown, 
but abandoned."* 

De Tocqueville's views seem to be confirmed 
by the later observations of Bourget, who says: 
'The play which the authors of this country excel 
in writing and the actors in playing is a kind of 
comedy, almost without affectation and intrigue, 
entirely composed of local scenes and customs, and 
mixed with pantomime. If the now antiquated 
expression, *a section of life,' could ever have been 
applied to plays, it may be to these. "t 

Concerning the present-day drama in Amer- 
ica, Miinsterberg remarks that ''there is certainly 
no lack of theatres, for almost every town has its 
'opera house,' and the large cities really have too 
many. Nor is there any lack of histrionic talent, 
for, although the great Shakespearean actor, Edwin 
Booth, has no worthy successor, we have still act- 
ors who are greatly applauded and loved — Mans- 
field, Sothern, Jefferson, Drew, and Gillette; 
Maude Adams, Mrs. Fiske, Blanche Bates, Henri- 
etta Crosman, Julia Arthur, Julia Marlow, Ada 
Rehan, Nance O'Neill, and many others who are 
certainly sincere artists, and the most brilliant act- 
ors of Europe, Irving and Tree, Duse, Bernhardt, 
Sorma, and Campbell, come almost every year to 
play in this country. The American's natural ver- 
satility gives him a great advantage for the the- 
atrical career; and so it is no accident that am- 
ateur theatricals are nowhere else so popular, es- 
pecially among student men and women. The 

'■• IT, 89. t p. 340. 



The Drama 381 

equipments of the stage, moreover, leave very- 
little to be desired, and the settings sometimes 
surpass anything v^hich can be seen in Europe; one 
often sees marvelous effects and most convincing 
illusions. And these, with the American good 
humor, nerve, and self-assurance, and the beauty 
of American women, bring many a graceful com- 
edy and light opera to a really artistic perform- 
ance. The great public, too, is quite content, and 
fills the theatres to overflowing. It seems almost 
unjust to criticise unfavorably the country's the- 
atres. 

"But the general public is not the only nor 
even the most important factor; the discriminating 
public is not satisfied. Artistic productions of the 
most serious sort are drowned out by a great tide 
of worthless entertainments; and however amus- 
ing or diverting the comedies, farces, rural pieces, 
operettas, melodramas, and dramatized novels may 
be, they are thoroughly unworthy of a people that 
is so ceaselessly striving for cultivation and self- 
perfection. Such pieces should not have the assur- 
ance to invade the territory of true art. And, al- 
though the lack of good plays is less noticeable, if 
one looks at the announcements of what is to be 
given in New York on any single evening, it is 
tremendously borne along on one by the bad prac- 
tice of repeating the plays night after night for 
many weeks, so that a person who wants to see 
real art has soon seen every production which is 
worth while. In this respect New York is distinct- 
ly behind Paris, Berlin or Vienna, although about 



382 Democracy In America 

on a level with London; and in the other large 
cities of America the situation is rather worse. 
Everywhere the stage caters to the vulgar taste, 
and for one Hamlet there are ten Geishas. * * * 

"All are agreed that there is only one way to 
better matters. Permanent companies must be or- 
ganized, in the large cities at first, to play in reper- 
toire. And these must be subsidized, so as not to 
be dependent for their support on the taste of the 
general public. Then and then only will the dram- 
atic art be able to thrive, or the theatre become 
an educational institution, and so slowly cultivate 
a better demand, which in the end will come to 
make even the most eclectic theatre self-support- 
ing. So it has always been on the European Con- 
tinent; princes and municipalities have rivaled 
with one another to raise the level of dramatic art 
above what it would have to be if financially de- 
pendent solely on the box-office. In the United 
States there is certainly no lack of means or good 
will to encourage such' an educational institution. 
Untold millions go to libraries, museums, and uni- 
versities, and we may well ask why the slightest 
attempt has not been made to provide, by gift or 
from the public treasury, for a temple to the 
drama. 

"It is just here that the old Puritan prejudice 
is still felt today. The theatre is no longer under 
the ban of the law, but no step can be taken to- 
wards a subvention of the theatre. Most taxpayers 
in America would look with disfavor on any pro- 
ject to support a theatre from public funds. Why 



The Drama 383 

a theatre more than a hotel or restaurant? The 
theatre remains a place of frivolous amusement, 
and for that reason no millionaires have so far en- 
dowed a theatre. Men like Carnegie know well 
that the general mass of people would blame them 
if they were to give their millions to the theatre, as 
long as a single town was still wishing for it-s 
library or its college."* 

The motion picture has very recently come to 
be the predominant form of art in America, as in 
Europe, and has almost entirely suppressed the 
spoken drama except in the large cities. It is 
much more democratic even than the spoken 
drama, because of its cheapness, and the fact that 
it can be appreciated even by the illiterate. 

In view of the immense number of people who 
patronize it daily, it is more subservient to the 
popular taste than any other form of art, and at 
the same time has an influence upon the people, 
at least in some respects, not only greater than 
that of any other art, but greater than that of 
the Church or the Public Schools. In fact, no 
institution has yet developed which is comparable 
to the motion picture in its power of appealing 
directly to all classes of people. 

Sufficient time has not yet elapsed to estimate 
correctly the effect of this new art upon our na- 
tional character. Nevertheless, enough is known 
of its organization to warrant the view that the 
total effect of the pictures turned out has been to 
degrade the dramatic art, and to corrupt the pub- 
lic taste and morals. 

* p. 476. 



384 Democracy In America 

The production of picture films is controlled 
by a few great business organizations which de- 
termine the character of the plays to be acted, 
and therefore also the character of the authors 
who write them. Any art so centralized and com- 
mercialized can have only a demoralizing effect 
upon its producers and upon the public. In order 
to attract the greatest number of patrons, the 
film companies demand plays which are highly 
sensational, and this demand is met by an exag- 
gerated representation of "The Wild West," and 
of all the grossness, vice and crime of the under- 
world, the authors going upon the false assump- 
tion that any play is moral if the villain in it is 
punished. The exhibition of evil punished can 
only appeal to our sense of fear, which, be it to 
the credit of human nature, has never yet accom- 
plished any great result; while familiarity with 
evil diminishes its horror and incites its commis- 
sion. The only kind of play which is moral or 
elevating is that which is romantic in the sense 
understood by Euskin, i. e., which represents in a 
heightened degree some human virtue. 

In spite of many very artistic and inspiring 
picture plays which have been exhibited in Amer- 
ica, the general run of them has been such as to 
debase the intelligence and blunt the moral sense 
of the people. Especially deplorable is the influ- 
ence of the cheap and sensual type of romance in 
undermining that respect for wlomen for which the 
Americans have been hitherto justly commended. 

Any kind of censorship of picture films could 
have only the negative effect of suppressing im- 



The Drama 385 

moral exhibitions. It could not inspire the pro- 
duction of a high order of art. The present 
National Board of Review does not even have this 
negative effect. It is supported by the film man- 
ufacturers, and has the same effect upon the pro- 
duction of good art that a committee of beer- 
tasters, supported by the brewers, would have on 
the production of good beer. 

The elevation of the motion pictures to the 
level of the other fine arts can only come about 
by the recognition of the fact that recreation is as 
important a part of education as the studying of 
books or the learning of a trade; and by the tak- 
ing over of the motion pictures by the city, state, 
and nation, as an essential instrument of educa- 
tion. In other words, the idea of supervised play- 
grounds should be carried over to the picture 
show. Then the motive underlying the production 
of films would be the promotion of dramatic art 
and the elevation of the people, and not the pro- 
duction of dividends for business corporations. 



CHAPTER XXIIT. 
ORATORY. 

IN ARISTOCRACIES A STATESMAN IS DISTINGUISHED BY 
BIRTH AND NEEDS NOT TO COURT NOTORIETY BY 
TALKING— IN DEMOCRACIES A STATESMAN IS OB- 
SCURE AND SEEKS FAVOR BY MUCH SPEECH-MAKING 
—DEMOCRATIC STATESMEN TALK TOO MUCH BUT 
CHOOSE SUBJECTS OF UNIVERSAL INTEREST AND 
EXERT A WORLD-WIDE INFLUENCE — AMERICAN 
GENIUS FOR ORATORY— GREAT NUMBER OF PLAT- 
FORM LECTURERS. 

In a republic, like that of the United States, 
sub-divided into states, counties, townships, and 
municipalities, in nearly every one of which there 
exists a legislative body, an extraordinary oppor- 
tunity is afforded for the development of oratory. 
The great number of men who are elected to the 
innumerable offices, and the frequency of elec- 
tions also, affords an extraordinary opportunity for 
the development of what is known as stump-speak- 
ing. It would be very remarkable, therefore, if the 
American people had not taken some advantage of 
this opportunity, and had not attained to some 
kind of distinction in public speaking. De Tocque- 
ville thought that the American statesmen were 
chiefly distinguished by talking too much, talking 
on subjects about which they were ill-informed, 
and talking when it was not in the interest of the 

[386] 



Oratory 387 

party or the country to talk. In other words, 
American statesmen were distinguished by the ab- 
sence of those flashes of silence which ought to 
characterize men of wisdom. 

'In America," he says, '*it generally happens 
that a representative only becomes somebody from 
his position in the assembly. He is therefore per- 
petually haunted by a craving to acquire import- 
ance there, and he feels a petulant desire to be 
constantly obtruding his opinions upon the house. 
His own vanity is not the only stimulant which 
urges him on in this course, but that of his constit- 
uents, and the continual necessity of propitiating 
them. Amongst aristocratic nations a member of 
the legislature is rarely in strict dependence upon 
his constituents; he is frequently to them a sort of 
unavoidable representative; sometimes they are 
themselves strictly dependent upon him; and if at 
length they reject him, he may easily get elected 
elsewhere, or, retiring from public life, he may still 
enjoy the pleasures of splendid idleness. In a dem- 
ocratic country like the United States a represen- 
tative has hardly ever a lasting hold on the minds 
of his constituents. However small an electoral 
body may be, the fluctuations of democracy are 
constantly changing its aspect; it must, therefore, 
be courted unceasingly. He is never sure of his 
supporters, and, if they forsake him, he is left 
without a resource ; for his natural position is not 
sufficiently elevated for him to be easily known 
to those not close to him ; and, with the complete 
state of independence prevailing among the people, 



388 Democracy In America 

he cannot hope that his friends or the government 
will send him down to be returned by an electoral 
body unacquainted with him. The seeds of his 
fortune are, therefore, sown in his own neighbor- 
hood; from that nook of earth he must start to 
raise himself to the command of a people and to 
influence the destinies of the world. Thus it is 
natural that in democratic countries the mem.bers 
of political assemblies think more of their constit- 
uents than of their party, whilst in aristocracies 
they think more of their party than of their con- 
stituents. 

"But what ought to be said to gratify con- 
stituents is not always what ought to be said in 
order to serve the party to which representatives 
profess to belong. The general interest of a party 
frequently demands that members belonging to it 
should not speak on great questions which they 
understand imperfectly; that they should speak 
but little on those minor questions which impede 
the great ones; lastly, and for the most part, that 
they should not speak at all. To keep silence is 
the most useful service that an indifferent spokes- 
man can render to the commonwealth. Constitu- 
ents, however, do not think so. The population of 
a district sends a representative to take a part in 
the government of the country, because they en- 
tertain a very lofty notion of his merits. A.s men 
appear greater in proportion to the littleness of 
the objects by which they are surrounded, it may 
be assumed that the opinion entertained of the 
delegate will be so much the higher as talents are 



Oratory 389 

more rare among his constituents. It will there- 
fore frequently happen that the less constituents 
have to expect from their representative, the more 
they will anticipate from him : and, however incom- 
petent he may be, they will not fail to call upon 
him for signal exertions, corresponding to the rank 
they have conferred upon him." * * * .j. 

"There is hardly a member of Congress who can 
make up his mind to go home without having dis- 
patched at least one speech to his constituents; 
nor who will endure any interruption until he has 
introduced into his harangue whatever useful sug- 
gestions may be made touching the four-and- 
twenty states of which the union is composed, and 
especially the district which he represents. He 
therefore presents to the mind of his auditors a 
succession of great general truths (which he him- 
self only comprehends, and expresses, confusedly), 
and of petty minutiae, which he is but too able to 
discover and to point out. The consequence is 
that the debates of that great assembly are fre- 
quently vague and perplexed, and that they seem 
rather to drag their slow length along than to 
advance towards a distinct object. Such a state 
of things will, I believe, always arise in the public 
assemblies of democracies. 

"Propitious circumstances and good laws 
might succeed in drawing to the legislature of a 
democratic people men very superior to those who 
are returned by the Americans to Congress, but 
nothing will ever prevent the mien of slender abil- 

tll, 96. 



390 Democracy In America 

ities who sit there from obtruding themselves with 
complacency, and in all ways, upon the public. 
The evil does not appear to me to be susceptible 
of entire cure, because it not only originates in the 
tactics of that assembly, but in its constitution and 
in that of the country. The inhabitants of the 
United States seem themselves to consider the mat- 
ter in this light; and they show their long experi- 
ence of parliamentary life not by abstaining from 
making bad speeches, but by courageously sub- 
mitting to hear them made. They are resigned to 
it, as to an evil which they know to be inevitable."* 
But democratic statesmen sometimes have oc- 
casion to speak on subjects of an exceptionally 
broad and vital nature, which attract the attention 
of the whole world, and make a deep and lasting 
impression on mankind. "We have shown the 
petty side of political debates in democratic assem- 
blies," says De Tocqueville, "let us now exhibit the 
more imposing one. The proceedings within the 
Parliament of England for the last one hundred 
and fifty years have never occasioned any great 
sensation out of that country; the opinions and 
feelings expressed by the speakers have never 
awakened much sympathy, even amongst the na- 
tions placed nearest to the great arena of British 
liberty; whereas, Europe was excited by the very 
first debate which took place in the small colonial 
assemblies of America at the time of the Revolu- 
tion. This was attributable not only to particular 
and fortuitous circumstances, but to general and 

* II, 97. 



Oratory 391 

lasting causes. I can conceive nothing more ad- 
mirable or more powerful than a great orator 
debating on great questions of state in a demo- 
cratic assembly. As no particular class is ever 
represented there by men commissioned to defend 
its own interests, it is always to the whole nation, 
and in the name of the whole nation, that the ora- 
tor speaks. This expands his thoughts, and height- 
ens his power of language. As precedents have 
there but little weight — as there are no longer any 
privileges attached to certain property, nor any 
rights inherent in certain bodies or in certain indi- 
viduals, the mind must have recourse to general 
truths derived from human nature to resolve the 
particular question under discussion. Hence the 
political debates of a democratic people, however 
small it may be, have a degree of breadth which 
frequently renders them attractive to mankind. All 
men are interested by them, because they treat of 
man, who is everywhere the same. Amongst the 
greatest aristocratic nations, on the contrary, the 
most general questions are almost always argued 
on some special grounds derived from the practice 
of a particular time, or the rights of a particular 
class; which interest that class alone, or at most 
the people amongst whom that class happens to 
exist. It is owing to this, as much as to the great- 
ness of the French people, and the favorable dis- 
position of the nations who listen to them, that 
the great effect which the French political debates 
sometimes produce in the world, must be attrib- 
uted. The orators of France frequently speak to 



392 Democracy In America 

mankind, even when they are addressing their 
countrymen only."* 

Admitting that the views of De Tocqueville, 
in regard to the wide appeal which democratic 
statesmen often have occasion to make, are well 
founded, there can be no doubt of his underrating 
the influence of British statesmen upon the world- 
wide humanitarian and democratic issues of the 
nineteenth century. In fact, throughout all of his 
discussions, De Tocqueville overestimated aristo- 
cratic tendencies in England, and fails to observe 
the progressive movement towards democracy. Of 
course, since De Tocqueville's time, everybody 
knows that England has become as much of a de- 
mocracy as France or the United States. 

This chapter may now be fittingly closed by 
the following quotations from Miinsterberg on the 
oratorical talent of the Americans: 

"A nation of politicians must reserve an hon- 
ourable place to the orator, and for many years 
thousands of factors in public life have contrib- 
uted to develop oratory, to encourage the slightest 
talent for speaking, and to reward able speakers 
well. Every great movement in American history 
has been initiated by eloquent speakers. Before 
the Revolution, Adams and Otis, Quincy and 
Henry, precipitated the Revolution by their burn- 
ing words. And no one can discuss the great 
movement leading up to the Civil War without con- 
sidering the oratory of Choate, Clay, Calhoun, 
Hayne, Garrison and Sumner, of Wendell Phillips, 

* II, 98. 



Oratory 398 

the great popular leader, and Edward Everett, the 
great academician, and of Daniel Webster, the 
greatest statesman of them all. 

"In the present times of peace, the orator is 
less important than the essayist, and most of the 
party speeches today have not even a modest 
place in literature. But if one follows a presiden- 
tial campaign, listens to the leading lawyers of the 
courts, or follows the parliamentary debates of 
university students, one knows that the rhetorical 
talent of the American has not died since those 
days of quickening, and would spring up again 
strong and vigorous if any great subject, greater 
than were silver coinage or the Philippine policy, 
should excite again the nation. Keenness of under- 
standing, admirable sense of form in the single 
sentence, as in the structure of the whole, startling 
comparisons, telling ridicule, careful management 
of the climax, and the tone of conviction seem to 
be everybody's gift. Here and there the phrase 
is hollow and thought is sacrificed to sound, but 
the general tendency goes toward brevity and sim- 
plicity. A most delightful variation of oratory is 
found in table eloquence; the true American after- 
dinner speech is a finished work of art. Often, of 
course, there are ordinary speeches which simply 
go from one story to another, quite content to re- 
late them well. In the best speeches the pointed 
anecdote is not lacking either, but it merely dec- 
orates the introduction; the speaker then ap- 
proaches his real subject half playfully and half 
in earnest, very sympathetically, and seeming al- 



394 Democracy In America 

ways to let his thoughts choose words for them- 
selves. The speeches at the capitol are some- 
times better than those in the Reichstag; but those 
at American banquets are not only better than the 
speeches at Festessen and Kommersen, but they 
are also qualitatively different — true literary 
works of art, for which the American is especially 
fitted by the freshness, humour, enthusiasm, and 
sense of sympathy which are naturally his."* 

In regard to the public lecturers, of which 
America has a vast army, Miinsterberg says: "As 
compared with European countries, a larger pro- 
portion of lectures may fairly be called works of 
art as regards both their content and their form. 
The American is first of all an artist in any sort of 
enthusiastic and persuasive exposition. For this 
very reason his lectures are so much more effect- 
ive than whatever he prints, and for this reason, 
too, the public flocks to hear him. This state of 
things has also been favored by the general custom 
of going to political meetings and listening to polit- 
ical speeches. In Boston and its suburbs, for ex- 
ample, although it is not larger than Hamburg, 
no less than five public lectures per day on the 
average are delivered between September and 
June."t 

* p. 464. t p. 386. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 
FINE ARTS. 

EARLY HYMN-TUNES FOLLOWED BY BAND MUSIC IN THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY— RECENT COMPOSERS— FOLK- 
SONGS— HIGH RANK OF AMERICAN PAINTERS AND 
SCULPTORS— ORIGINALITY OF AMERICAN ARCHI- 
TECTURE. 

The characteristics of the American people are 
as conspicuously revealed in the kind of music 
which they compose or patronize as in their indus- 
trial life, their political life, or their philosophy. 
The aggressiveness and restlessness of the Amer- 
icans are shown in their fondness for "Yankee 
Doodle", **Dixie", the marches of Sousa, and other 
music in which the rhythm or movement is accen- 
tuated. Sousa could hardly have become the great 
''March King" had he not immigrated to America. 
A characteristic of ''ragtime" and "jazz" music, 
which are having a rage among the Americans, 
is a syncopation which produces an erratic accent, 
and an effect of strenuosity. In music, as in 
business, the Americans like something tumultuous 
and fast-going. Even in their sports they prefer 
games in which the players have to slide "to get 
there." 

In the higher class of music, the American's 
love of nature, his humanitarianism and idealism 
are also clearly disclosed. No foreign author, 

[395J 



396 Democracy In America 

Piowever, has attempted to interpret the character 
of the American people in their music. Miinster- 
berg, who has given the most intelligent account 
of American music, limits himself to its historical 
aspect. 

'There were religious composers in the 
eighteenth century/' says Miinsterberg, ''and when 
everything English was put away at the time of 
the Revolution, the colonists replaced the psalm- 
tunes which they had brought over with original 
airs. Billings and his school were especially popu- 
lar, although there was an early reaction against 
what he pleased to call fugues. The nineteenth 
century brought forth little more than band-music, 
with no sign of inspiration in real orchestral or 
operatic music. Only lately there have stepped 
into the field such eminent composers as Mac- 
Dowell, Paine, Chadwick, Strong, Beeck, Buck, 
Parker, and Foot. Paine's opera of 'Azara,' Chad- 
wick's overtures, and MacDowelFs interesting com- 
positions show how American music will develop. 

''More popular was the modest branch of 
musical composition, the song in the style of folk- 
songs. America has no actual folk-songs. The 
average European imagines 'Yankee Doodle' to be 
the real American song, anonymous and dreadful 
as it is, and in diplomatic circles the antiquated 
and bombastic 'Hail Columbia' is conceived to be 
the official hymn of America. The Americans 
themselves recognize neither of these airs. The 
'Star Spangled Banner' is the only song which 
can be called national; it was written in 1814 to 



Fine Arts 397 

an old and probably English melody. The Civil 
War left certain other songs which stir the breast 
of every patriotic American. 

"On the other hand, folk-songs have developed 
in only one part of the country — on the Southern 
plantations— and with very local coloring. The 
negro slaves sang these songs first, although it is 
unlikely that they are really African songs. They 
seem to be Irish and Scotch ballads, which the 
negroes heard on the Mississippi steamboats. Bap- 
tist and Methodist psalm-tunes and French melo- 
dies were caught up by the musical negroes and 
modified to their peculiar melody and rhythm. A 
remarkable sadness pervades all these Southern 
airs. 

''Many song composers have imitated this most 
unique musical product of the country. In the 
middle of the century Stephen Foster rose to rapid 
popularity with his 'Old Folks at Home,' which be- 
came the popular song, rivalled only by 'Home, 
Sweet Home,' which was taken from the text of 
an American opera, but of which the melody is 
said to have originated in Sicily. There are to- 
day all sorts of composers, some in the sentimental 
style and others in the light opera vein, whose 
street tunes are instantly sung, whistled and played 
on hurdy-gurdies from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
and, worst of all, stridently rendered by the graph- 
ophones, with megaphone attachments, on ver- 
andahs in summer. There are composers of church 
hymns, or marches a la Sousa, and writers of 
piano pieces by the wholesale. All serious music- 



398 Democracy In America 

ians agree that the American, unlike the English- 
man, is decidedly musically inclined, but he is the 
incontestable master of only a very modest musical 
art — he can whistle as nobody else. 

''Unlike American music, American paintings 
are no longer strange to Europe. In the art di- 
vision of the last Paris Exposition Americans took 
their share of the honours, and they are highly 
appreciated at most of the Berlin and Munich pic- 
ture shows. Sargent and Whistler are the best 
known. Sargent as the painter of elegant ladies, 
prosperous men, and interesting children, has un- 
doubtedly the surest and most refined gift with his 
brush of any son of the New World. When, a few 
years ago, a large exhibition of his works was 
brought together in Boston, one felt on standing 
before that gathering of ultra-polite and almost 
living humanity, that in him the elegant world has 
found its most brilliant, though perhaps not its 
most flattering, transcriber. Whistler is doubtless 
the greater, the real sovereign. This most nervous 
of all artists has reproduced his human victims 
with positively uncanny perspicacity. Like Henry 
James, the novelist, he fathoms each human rid- 
dle, and expresses it intangibly, mysteriously. 
Everything is mood and suggestion, the dull and 
heavy is volatilized, the whole is a sceptical rend- 
ering in rich twilight tones. 

''America is proud of both artists, and still 
one may doubt whether the art of the New World 
would be justly represented if it sent across the 
ocean only these two pampered and somewhat 



Fine Arts 399 

whimsical artists. Firstly, in spite of much bril- 
liant other work, they are both best known as por- 
traitists, while it becomes plainer every day that 
landscape painting is the most typical American 
means of expression. The profound feeling for 
nature, which pervades American poetry and re- 
flects the national life and struggle therewith, 
brings the American to study landscape. Many 
persons think even that if American artists were to 
send ever so many easel pictures across the ocean, 
the artistic public of Europe would still have no 
adequate judgment of American painting, because 
the best talent is busied with the larger pieces in- 
tended for wall decoration. The great number of 
monumental buildings, with their large wall sur- 
faces and the desire for ambitious creations, at- 
tract the American today to wall painting. And 
they try to strengthen the national character of 
this tendency by a democratic argument. The 
easel picture, it is said, is a luxury designed for 
the house of the wealthy and is, therefore, deca- 
dent, while the art of a nation which is working 
out a democracy must pertain to the people; and 
therefore just as early art adorned the temples 
and churches, this art must adorn the walls of 
public buildings, libraries, judicial chambers, leg- 
islatures, theatres, railway stations and city halls. 
And the more this comes to be the case, the less 
correct it is to judge the pinctile efforts of the 
time by the framed pictures that come into exhibi- 
tions. Moreover, many of the more successful 



400 Democracy In America 

painters do not take the trouble to send any of 
their works across the ocean. 

''Sargent and Whistler also — and this is more 
important — speak a language which is not Amer- 
ican, while the country has now developed its own 
grammar of painting, and the most representative 
artists are seldom seen in Europe. In painting, as 
in so many other branches, the United States has 
developed from the provincial to the cosmopolitan 
and from the cosmopolitan to the national, and is 
now making this last step. It is very character- 
istic that the untutored provincial has grown into 
the national only by passing through a cosmopol- 
itan stage. The faltering powers of the beginner 
do not achieve a self-conscious expression of na- 
tional individuality until they have first indus- 
triously and systematically imitated foreign 
methods, and so attained a complete mastery of 
the medium of expression. 

"At first the country, whose poor population 
was not able to pay much attention to pictures, 
turned entirely to England. West and Copley are 
the only pre-Revolutionary Americans whose pic- 
tures possess any value. The portraits of their pre- 
decessors — as, for instance, those in Memorial 
Hall at Harvard — are stiff, hard, and expression- 
less. Then came Gilbert Stuart at the end of the 
eighteenth century, whose portraits of George and 
Martha Washington are famous, and who showed 
himself an artistic genius and quite the equal of 
the great English portraitists. John Trumbull, an 
officer in the Revolutionary Army, who lived at 



Fine Arts 401 

the same time, was still more important for the 
national history by his war pictures, the best of 
which were considerably above contemporary pro- 
ductions. The historical wall-paintings which he 
made in 1817, for the capitol at Washington, are 
in his later and inferior manner. They seem to- 
day, like everything which was done in the early 
part of the. century to decorate the capitol, hack- 
neyed and tiresome. And if one goes from the 
capitol to the Congressional Library, which shows 
the condition of art at the end of the nineteenth 
century, one feels how far the public taste of 
Trumbull's time was from appreciating true art. 
Portraiture was the only art which attained toler- 
able excellence, where, besides Stuart, there were 
Peale, Wright, and Savage. Then came the day 
of the ^American Titian,' Allston, whose Biblical 
pictures were greatly praised for their brilliant 
coloring. 

**Hitherto artists had gone to England to study 
or, indeed, sometimes to Italy. In the second 
third of the century they went to Diisseldorf; they 
painted American landscapes, American popular 
life, and historical pictures of American heroes, all 
in German fashion. They delighted in genre stud- 
ies in the Diisseldorf manner, and painted the 
Hudson River all bathed in German moonlight. 
While the popular school was still painting the 
world in blackish brown, the artistic secession be- 
gan at about the time of the Civil War. Then 
artists began to go to Paris and Munich, and Amer- 
ican painting developed more freely. It was a 



402 Democracy in America 

time of earnest, profound, and independent study 
such as so far had never been. The artist learned 
to draw, learned to see values, and, in the end, to 
be natural. The number of artists now began to 
increase, and to-day Americans produce thousands 
of pictures each year, and one who sees the Eu- 
ropean exhibitions in summer and the American in 
winter does not feel that the latter are on a 
much lower level. 

''Since Allston's time the leaders in landscape 
have been Cole, Bierstadt, Kensett, and Gifford; in 
genre, Leslie, Woodville, and particularly Mount; 
in historical painting, Lentze and White; in portra- 
iture, Inman and Elliott. The first who preached 
the new doctrine of individuality and color was 
Hunt, and in the early seventies the new school 
just graduated from Paris and Munich was bravely 
at work. There are many well-known names in 
the last thirty years, and it is a matter rather of 
individual choice what pictures one prefers of all 
the large number. Yet no one would omit George 
Inness from the list, since he has seen American 
landscapes more individually than any one else. 
Besides his pictures every one knows the marines 
of Winslow Homer, the street scenes of Childe 
Hassam, the heads of Eaton, the autumn forests 
of Enneking, the apple trees in spring-time of 
Appleton Brown, the delicate landscapes of Weir 
and Tryon, the wall pictures of Abbey, Cox, and 
Low, Gaugengigl's little figure paintings, Vedder's 
ambitious symbolism, the brilliant portraits of Ce- 
cilia Beaux and Chase, the woman's heads of Tar- 



Fine Arts 403 

bell, the ideal figures of Abbot Thayer, and the 
works of a hundred other American artists, not to 
mention those who are really more familiar in 
London, Paris, and Munich than in America itself. 

"Besides the oil pictures, there are excellent 
water-colours, pastelles, and etchings; and, per- 
haps most characteristic of all, there is the stained 
glass of La Farge, Lathrop, the late Mrs. Whit- 
man, Goodhue, and others. The workers in pen- 
and-ink are highly accomplished, of whom the best 
known is Gibson, whose American w^omen are not 
only artistic, but have been socially influential on 
American ideals and manners. His sketches for 
Life have been themselves models for real life. 
Nor should we forget Pennell, the master of atmos- 
phere in pen-and-ink."* 

"Sculpture has developed more slowly. It pre- 
supposes a higher understanding of art than does 
painting; and, besides that, the prudishness of the 
Puritan has affected it adversely. When John 
Brazee, the first American amateur sculptor, in the 
early part of the nineteenth century, asked advice 
of the president of the New York Academy of 
Arts, he was told that he would better wait a 
hundred years before practicing sculpture in 
America. The speech admirably showed the gen- 
eral lack of interest in plastic art. But the im- 
petuous pressure toward self-perfection existing in 
the nation shortened the century into decades; 
people began to journey through Italy. The pio- 
neers of sculpture were Greenough, Powers, Craw- 

*p. 483. 



404 Democracy in America 

ford, and Palmer, and their statues are still valued 
for their historical interest. The theatrical genre 
groups of John Rogers became very popular; and 
Randolph Rogers, who created the Columbus 
bronze doors of the capitol, was really an artist. 
Then came Storey, Ball, Rinehart, Hosmer, Mead, 
and many others with works of greater maturity. 
Squares and public buildings v/ere filled with mon- 
uments and busts which, to be sure, were generally 
more interesting politically than artistically, and 
which to-day wait patiently for a charitable earth- 
quake. And yet they show how the taste for plas- 
tic art has slowly worked upward. 

"More recent movements, which are con- 
nected with the names of Ward, Warner, Part- 
ridge, French, Macmonnies. and St. Gaudens, have 
already left many beautiful examples of sculpture. 
Cities are jealously watchful now that only real 
works of art shall be erected, and that monuments 
which are to be seen by millions of people shall 
be really characteristic examples of good art. 
More than anything else, sculpture has at length 
come into a closer sympathy with architecture 
'than perhaps it has in any other country. The 
admirable sculptural decorations of the Chicago 
World's Fair, the effective Dewey Triumphal Arch 
and the permanent plastic decorations of the Con- 
gressional Library, the more restrained and dis- 
tinguished decorations of the Court of Appeals in 
New York City, and of many similar buildings 
show clearly that American sculpture has ended 
its period of immaturity. Such a work as St. 



Fine Arts 405 

Gaudens' Shaw Memorial in Boston is among the 
most beautiful examples of modem sculpture; and 
it is thoroughly American, not only because the 
negro regiment marches behind the mounted 
colonel, but because the American subject is 
handled in the American spirit. These men are 
depicted with striking vigor, and the young negro 
hero riding to his death is conceived with Puritan 
sobriety. Vigoruus and mature is the American, in 
plastic art as well as in poetry."* 

Muirhead remarks upon American sculpture: 
"Let the Englishman who does not believe in an 
American school of sculpture look at St. Gaudens' 
statue of Admiral Farragut in Madison Square, 
and say we have a better or as good a single figure 
in any of our streets. "f 

In regard to architecture, Mlinsterberg points 
out that the American people "could wait for 
poetry, music, and painting while they were busy 
in keeping off the Indians and felling the forests, 
but they had to have houses at once. And since at 
that time they had no independent interest in art, 
they imitated forms with which they had been 
familiar, and everywhere perpetuated the archi- 
tectural ideas of their mother country. But the 
builder is at a disadvantage beside the painter, the 
singer, and the poet, in that when he imitates he 
cannot even do that as he will, but is bound down 
by climate, by social requirements, and especially 
by his building material. And when he is placed 

* p. 484. ip. 198 



406 Democracy in America 

in new surroundings, he is forced to strike out for 
himself. 

^'Although the American colonist remained 
under the influence of English architecture, his 
environment forced him in the first place to build 
his house of wood instead of stone as in England, 
and in wood he could not so easily copy the pat- 
tern. It had to be a» new variation of the older 
art. And so architecture, although it more slav- 
ishly followed the mother country than any other 
art, was the- earliest to strike out in some respects 
on an independent course. It borrowed its forms, 
but originated their applications; and while it 
slowly adopted new ideas of style and became 
gradually free of European styles, it became free 
even earlier in their technical application, owing 
to the new American conditions. More than any 
other feature of her civilization, American archi- 
tecture reveals the entire history of the people 
from the days when the Puritans lived in little 
wooden villages to the present era of the sky- 
scraper of the large cities; and in this growth 
more than in that of any other art the whole coun- 
try participates, and especially the West, with its 
tremendous energy, which is awkward with the 
violin-bow and the crayon but is well versed in 
piling stone on stone. 

"In Colonial days, English renaissance archi- 
tecture was imitated in wood, a material which 
necessitated slender columns and called for finer 
detail and more graceful lines than were possible 
in stone. One sees to-day, especially in the New 



Fine Arts 407 

England states, many such buildings, quite unal- 
tered; and the better of these in Salem, Cambridge, 
and Newport are, in spite of their lightness, sub- 
stantial and distinguished as no European would 
think possible in so ordinary a material as wood. 
Large, beautiful halls, with broad, open staircases 
and broad balusters, greet the visitor; large fire- 
places, with handsomely carved chimney-pieces, 
high wainscotings on the walls and beautiful 
beams across the ceilings. The more modest 
houses show the same thing on a small scale. 
There was this one style through the whole town, 
and its rules were regarded as canonical. In cer- 
tain parts of the country there were inconspicuous 
traces of Spanish, French, and Dutch influence, 
which survive to-day in many places, especially in 
the South, and contribute to the picturesqueness of 
the architectural whole. 

"After the Revolutionary period, people wished 
to break with English traditions, and the immigra- 
tion from many different countries brought a great 
variety of architectural stimulation. A time of 
general imitation had arrived, for in architecture 
also the country was to grow from the provincial 
to the national through a cosmopolitan stage. At 
the end of the eighteenth century, architecture 
was chiefly influenced by the classic Greek. Farm- 
houses masqueraded as big temples, and the 
thoughtless application of this form became so 
monotonous that it was not continued very long 
in private houses. Then the Capitol at Washington 
was begun by Latrobe and finished by the more 



408 Democracy in America 

competent Bulfinch, and became the model for al- 
most all state capitols of the Union. Bulfinch him- 
self designed the famous State House of Massachu- 
setts, but it was the Puritan spirit of Boston which 
selected the austere Greek temple to typify the 
public spirit. The entire country, in spite of many 
variations, stood under this influence, and until 
recently nobody has ventured to put up a civil 
structure in a freer, more picturesque style. 

"Many of these single state capitols built dur- 
ing the century, such as the old one at Albany, are 
admirable ; while the post-offices, custom-houses, 
and other buildings dedicated to federal uses have 
been put up until recently cheaply and without 
thought. Lately, however, the architect has been 
given freer play. Meanwhile taste had wandered 
from the classic era to the Middle Ages, and the 
English Gothic had come to be popular. The ro- 
mantic took the place of the classic, and the build- 
ings were made picturesque. The effect of this 
was most happy on church edifices, and about the 
middle of the century Richard Upjohn, 'the father 
of American architecture,' built a number of 
famous churches in the Gothic style. 

''But in secular edifices the spirit went wholly 
to architectural lawlessness. People were too little 
trained to preserve a discipline of style along with 
the freedom of the picturesque. And even more 
unfortunate than the lack of training of the archi- 
tect, who committed improprieties because uncer- 
tain in his judgment, there was the tastelessness 
of the parvenu patron, and this particularly in the 



Fine Arts 409 

West. Then came the time of unrest and vulgar 
splurge, when in a single residential street palaces 
from all parts of the world were cheaply copied, 
and just as in Europe forgotten styles were super- 
ficially reproduced. The Queen Anne style became 
fashionable ; and then native Colonial and Dutch 
motives were revived. 

''This period is now long past. The last 
twenty-five years in the East and the last ten years 
in the West have seen this tasteless, hap-hazard, 
and ignorant experimenting with different styles 
give place to building which is thoughtful, inde- 
pendent, and generally beautiful ; though, of 
course, much that is ugly has continued to be built. 
Architecture itself has developed a careful school, 
and the public has been trained by the architects. 
Of course, many regrettable buildings survive from 
former periods, so that the general impression to- 
day is often very confused ; but the newer streets 
in the residential, as well as the business, portions 
of cities and towns display the fitting homes and 
office buildings of a wealthy, independent, and art- 
loving people. In comparison with Europe, a neg- 
ative feature may be remarked ; namely, the not- 
able absence of rococo tendencies. It is sometimes 
found in interior decorations, but never on ex- 
teriors. 

"The positive features which especially strike 
the European are the prevalence of Romanesque 
and of the sky-scrapers. The round arch of the 
Romans comes more immediately from southern 
France ; but since its introduction to America, not- 



410 Democracy in America 

ably by the architectural genius of Richardson, the 
round arch has become far more popular than in 
Europe, and has given rise to a characteristic 
American style, which is represented to-day in hun- 
dreds of substantial buildings all over the country. 
There is something heavy, rigid, and at the same 
time energetic, in these great arches resting on 
short massive columns, in the great, pointed, round 
towers, in the heavy balconies and the low arcades. 
The primitive force of America has found its artic- 
tic expression here, and the ease with which the 
new style has adapted itself to castle-like resi- 
dences, banks, museums, and business houses, and 
the quickness with which it has been adopted, in 
the old streets of Boston as in the newer ones of 
Chicago and Minneapolis, all show clearly that it 
is a really living style, and not merely an architec- 
tural whim. 

**The Romanesque style grew from an artistic 
idea, while the sky-scraper has developed through 
economic exigencies. New York is an island, 
wherefore the stage of her great business life can- 
not be extended, and every inch has had to be 
advantageously employed. It was necessary to 
build higher than commercial structures have ever 
been carried in Europe. At first these buildings 
were twenty stories high, but now they are even 
thirty. To rest such colossal structures on stone 
walls would have necessitated making the w^alls 
of the lower stories so thick as to take up all the 
most desirable room, and stone was therefore re- 
placed by steel. The entire structure is simply 



Fine Arts 411 

a steel framework, lightly cased in stone. Here- 
with arose quite new architectural problems. The 
sub-division of the twenty-story facade was a much 
simpler problem than the disposal of the interior 
space, where perhaps twenty elevators have to be 
speeding up and down, and ten thousand men go- 
ing in and out each day. The problem has been 
admirably solved. The absolute adaptation of the 
building to its requirements, and its execution in 
the most appropriate material — ^namely, steel and 
marble — the shaping of the rooms to the required 
ends, and the carrying out of every detail in a 
thoroughlj^ artistic spirit make a visit to the best 
office buildings of New York an artistic delight. 
And since very many of these are now built side by 
side of one another, they give the sky-line of the 
city a strength and significance which strike every 
one who is mature enough to find beauty in that to 
which he is not accustomed. When the problem 
had once been solved, it was natural for other in- 
dustrial cities to imitate New York, and the sky- 
scraper is now planted all over the Wesl."* 

Of American architecture, Muirhead says: 
''Architecture struck me as, perhaps, the one art in 
which America, so far as modern times are con- 
cerned, could reasonably claim to be on a par 
with, if not ahead of, any European country what- 

soever.^'t 

Matthew Arnold remarked that ''in general, 
where the Americans succeed best in their archi- 

*p. 488. tp. 191. 



412 Democracy in America 

lecture — in that art so indicative and educative of 
a people's sense of beauty — is in the fashion of 
their villa-cottages in wood. These are often 
original and at the same time very pleasing, but 
they are pretty and coquettish, not beautiful.'** 

William Archer, writing of American archi- 
tecture from the standpoint of observation in New 
York, says: ''At almost every turn in New York, 
one comes across some building that gives one a 
little shock of pleasure. Sometimes, indeed, it is 
the pleasure of recognizing an old friend in a new 
place — a patch of Venice or a chunk of Florence 
transported bodily to the New World. The exqui- 
site tower of the Madison Square Garden, for in- 
stance, is modelled on that of the Giralda, at Se- 
ville; while the new University Club, on Fifth 
Avenue, is simply a Florentine fortress-palace of 
somewhat disproportionate height. But along with 
a good deal of sheer reproduction of European 
models, one finds a great deal of ingenious and in- 
ventive adaption, to say nothing of a very delicate 
taste in the treatment of detail." f 

*'In short, architecture is here a living art. 
Go where you will in these up-town regions, you 
can see imagination and cultured intelligence in 
the act, as it were, of impressing beauty of pro- 
portion and detail upon brick and terra cotta, 
granite and marble. And domestic or middle- 
class architecture is not neglected. The American 
'master builders' do not confine themselves to tow- 

* p. 174. t p. 32. 



Fine Arts 413 

ers and palaces, but give infinite thought and lov- 
ing care to 'homes for human beings.' The average 
old-fashioned New York house, so far as I have 
seen it, is externally unattractive (the character- 
istic material, a sort of coffee-coloured stone, being 
truly hideous), and internally dark, cramped, and 
stuffy. But modern houses, even of no special pre- 
tentions, are generally delightful, with their pol- 
ished wood floors and fittings, and their airy suites 
of rooms. The American architect has a great 
advantage over his English colleague in the fact 
that in furnace-heated houses only the bedrooms 
require to be shut off with doors. The halls and 
public rooms can be grouped so that, when the 
curtains hung in their wide door ways are drawn 
back, two, three, or four rooms are open to the 
eye at once, and charming effects of space and 
light-and-shade can be obtained. Of this advan- 
tage the modern house-planner makes excellent 
use, and I have seen more than one quite modest 
family house which, without any sacrifice of com- 
fort, gives one a sense of almost palatial spacious- 
ness. An architectural exhibition which I saw the 
other day proved that equal or even greater care 
and attention is being bestowed upon the country 
house, in which a characteristically American style 
is being developed, mainly founded, I take it, upon 
the sauve and graceful classicism of Colonial arch- 
itecture. The wide 'piazza' is its most noteworthy 
feature, and the opportunity it offers for beautiful 
cloister- work is being utilized to ^he full."* 

* p. 33. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

INDUSTRIAL ART AND GENERAL CONSIDER- 
ATIONS ON AMERICA'S ACHIEVEMENT 
IN ALL THE ARTS. 

DEMOCRACIES TEND TO PROMOTE INFERIOR WORK- 
I^IANSHIP AND COUNTERFEITING— AMERICANS SU- 
PERIOR IN MANY LINES OF INDUSTRIAL ART— DE- 
FICIENCIES IN THE FINE ARTS DUE TO THE NEWNESS 
OF CONDITIONS— TO THE DEMAND FOR PRACTICAL 
WORKERS— TO THE LACK OF COMMON TRADITIONS, 
LACK OF COMMON TYPES AND MODELS, AND TO 
HASTE—THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN ART. 

De Tocqueville thought that in aristocratic 
countries the class of people who purchased works 
of art was a permanent class, possessing very culti- 
vated tastes, and therefore demanding superior 
workmanship; whereas, in democracies a great 
multitude of people demand works of art, their 
tastes are unrefined and they are satisfied with 
works of an inferior quality. 

"In countries in which riches, as well as power 
are concentrated and retained in the hands of the 
few," he says, "the use of the greater part of 
this world's goods belongs to a small number of 
individuals, who are always the same. Necessity, 
public opinion, or moderate desires exclude all 
others from the enjoyment of them. As this aris- 
tocratic class remains fixed at the pinnacle of 

[414] 



The Industrial Arts 415 

greatness on which it stands, without diminution 
or increase, it is always acted upon by the same 
wants and affected by them in the same manner. 
The men of whom it is composed naturally derive 
from their superior and hereditary position a taste 
for what is extremely well made and lasting. This 
affects the general way of thinking of the nation 
in relation to the arts. It often occurs, among 
such a people, that even a peasant will rather go 
without the object he covets, than procure it in a 
state of imxperfection*. In aristocracies, then, the 
handicraftsmen wo.rk for only a limited number of 
very fastidious customers; the profit they hope to 
make depends principally on the perfection of 
their workmanship." * 

"On the other hand," adds De Tocqueville, 
"in democracies there are always a multitude of 
individuals whose wants are above their means, 
and who are very willing to take up with imperfect 
satisfaction rather than abandon the object of 
their desires. 

"The artisan readily understands these pas- 
sions, for he himself partakes in them; in an aris- 
tocracy he would seek to sell his workmanship at 
a high price to the few; he now conceives that the 
more expeditious way of getting rich is to sell 
them at a low price to all. But there are only 
two ways of lowering the price of commodities. 
The first is to discover some better, shorter, and 
more ingenious method of producing them; the 
second is to manufacture a larger quantity of goods, 

* II, 51. 



416 Democracy in America 

nearly similar, but of less value. Amongst a dem- 
ocratic population, all the intellectual faculties of 
the workman are directed to these two objects; he 
strives to invent methods which may enable him 
not only to work better, but quicker and cheaper; 
or, if he cannot succeed in that, to diminish the 
intrinsic qualities of the thing he makes, without 
rendering it wholly unfit for the use for which it is 
intended. When none but the wealthy had watches, 
they were almost all very good ones; few are now 
made which are worth much, but everybody has 
one in his pocket. Thus the democratic principle 
not only tends to direct the human mind to the 
useful arts, but it induces the artisan to produce 
with greater rapidity a quantity of imperfect com- 
modities, and the consumer to content himself with 
these commodities. 

'*Not that in democracies the arts are incap- 
able of producing very commendable works, if 
such be required. This may occasionally be the 
case, if customers appear who are ready to pay 
for time and trouble. In this rivalry of every kind 
of industry — in the midst of this immense competi- 
tion and these countless experiments, some excel- 
lent workmen are found who reach the utmost 
limits of their craft. But they have rarely an 
opportunity of displaying what they can do ; they 
are scrupulously sparing of their powers; they re- 
main in a state of accomplished mediocrity, which 
condemns itself, and, though it be very well able 
to shoot beyond the mark before it, aims only at 
what it hits. In aristocracies, on the contrary, 



The Industrial Arts 417 

workmen always do all they can; and when they 
stop, it is because they have reached the limit of 
their attainments."! * * * 

*The handicraftsmen of democratic ages en- 
deavor not only to bring their useful productions 
within the reach of the whole community, but they 
strive to give to all their commodities attractive 
qualities which they do not in reality possess. In 
the confusion of all ranks everyone hopes to ap- 
pear what he is not, and makes great exertions to 
succeed in this object. This sentiment indeed, 
which is but too natural to the heart of man, does 
not originate in the democratic principle; but that 
principle applies it to material objects. To mimic 
virtue is of every age; but the hypocrisy of luxury 
belongs more particularly to the ages of democ- 
racy. 

"To satisfy these new cravings of human van- 
ity the arts have recourse to every species of im- 
posture; and these devices sometimes go so far as 
to defeat their own purpose. Imitation diamonds 
are now made which may be easily mistaken for 
real ones; as soon as the art of fabricating false 
diamonds shall have reached so high a degree of 
perfection that they cannot be distinguished from 
real ones, it is probable that both one and the 
other will be abandoned, and become mere pebbles 
again."* 

By way of amplifying the views of De Tocque- 
ville, it may be said that there is never much coun- 
terfeiting except where there is also much that is 

t II, 53. * II, 53. 



418 Democracy in America 

genuine and of superior value. American indus- 
trial arts have had their chief development since 
the time of De Tocqueville, and, in some lines, 
have attained to an unsurpassed excellence. The 
beauty of anything useful consists in the perfec- 
tion with which it serves its purpose. In the useful 
arts generally, by reason of the concentration of 
interest and talent upon them and the fierce com- 
petition in producing them, the Americans have 
frequently reached that degree of perfection which 
leads the public to regard them as standardized. 
Useful products are considered standardized when- 
ever they arrive at an adaptation to their purpose 
which everybody recognizes as admitting of 
no further evolution. Perhaps the best example of 
this is the woodsman's axe, a tool more used by 
the Americans than any other people. It has gone 
through four centuries of evolution, and has re- 
ceived contributions from millions of expert axe- 
men, and thousands of expert axe-makers. The 
result is a tool which, in its size, weight, texture, 
length and form (including the handle), is per- 
fectly adapted to its purpose. Consequently, from 
an artistic point of view, it is the most symmetrical 
and beautiful of American tools. The same excel- 
lence belongs to the American saw, hammer, and 
most other tools. A similar but less perfect me- 
chanical and artistic result may be noted in the 
American watches, guns, sewing-machines, stoves, 
locomotives, printing-presses, books, magazines, 

and newspapers. 

* * * . * 



The Industrial Arts 419 

Summing up American achievements in all of 
the arts, it would be far from the truth to pre- 
sume that they have been equal to those of the 
mature nations of Europe. It might not be pre- 
suming too much, however, to claim that they have 
been as good as could have been reasonably ex- 
pected in view of the youth of the country, and its 
great demand for workers in the field of industry. 

American deficiencies in art are not due in 
any large measure to democratic institutions, but 
to other causes which should be obvious to the 
most superficial student. One of these causes is 
found in the whirlwind of change characteristic 
of our age, producing general confusion in all 
domains of art. Every other country, as well as 
America, has been sharing in this disadvantage. 
"The real cause of literary and artistic weakness,*' 
says Cooley, **I take to be chiefly the spiritual dis- 
organization incident to a time of rather sudden 
transition. * * * 

"With reference to the higher products of 
culture, not only the United States, but in some 
degree contemporary civilization in general, is a 
confused, a raw society, not as being democratic, 
but as being new. It is our whole newspaper and 
factory epoch that is crude, and scarcely more so 
than in England or Germany; the main difference 
in favor of European countries being that the 
present cannot so easily be separated from the 
conditions of an earlier culture. It is a general 
trait of the time that social types are disintegrated, 
old ones going to pieces and new ones not per- 



420 Democracy in America 

fected, leaving the individual without adequate 
discipline either in the old or in the new. 

"Now works of enduring greatness seem to 
depend, among other things, upon a certain ripe- 
ness of historical conditions. No matter how gifted 
an individual may be, he is in no way apart from 
his time, but has to take that and make the best 
of it he can; the man of genius is in one point of 
view only a twig upon which a mature tendency 
bears its perfect fruit. In the new epoch the vast 
things in process are as yet so unfinished that indi- 
dividual gifts are scarcely sufficient to bring any- 
thing to a classical completeness; so that our life 
remains somewhat inarticulate, our literature, and 
still more our plastic art, being inadequate expo- 
nents of what is most vital in the modern spirit. 

"The psychological effect of confusion is a 
lack of mature culture groups, and of what they 
only can do for intellectual or aesthetic produc- 
tion. What this means may, perhaps, be made 
clearer by a comparison drawn from athletic 
sports. We find in our colleges that to pro- 
duce a winning foot-ball team, or distinguished 
performance in running or jumping, it is essen- 
tial first of all to have a spirit of intense interest 
in these things, which shall arouse the ambition 
of those having natural gifts, support them in 
their training, and reward their success. Without 
this group spirit no efficient organization, no high 
standard of achievement, can exist, and a small in- 
stitution that has this will easily surpass a large 
one that lacks it. And experience shows that it 



The Industrial Arts 421 

takes much time to perfect such a spirit and the 
organization through which it is expressed. 

''In quite the same way any ripe development 
of productive power in literary or other art implies 
not merely capable individuals but the perfection 
of a social group, w^hose traditions and spirit the 
individual absorbs, and which floats him up to a 
point whence he can reach unique achievement."* 

In commenting upon American art, de Ling- 
ereux speaks as follows of the importance of the 
cultural group: 

'*Si Tart pouvait s'implanter a force d'argent 
et de volonte, qui le possederait plus qu' eux? Mais 
Tart est d'un ensemble. II est le resultat har- 
monieux entre une epoque et ses enfants. II esi 
indispensable qu'une race entiere — et non seulc- 
ment quelques isoles — soit heureuse d'admirer et 
de sentir avant qu'elle puisse incarner une famille 
d'artistes (au sens du groupe), famille dont s'epa- 
nouriront les maitres, resumant le passe, creant des 
ecoles ; sec maitres seront I'expression derniere des 
courants generaux et des facettes individuelles. 
L'oeuvre d'art, fresque ou symphonie, sonnet ou 
bijou, ne peut naitre subitement et sans motif; des 
artistes ne peuvent surgir isoles et' vivre solitaires 
— -ce sont la des couronnements, non des embryons. 

*'Ce maitre, en quelque branche qu'il s'exerce, 
ceramiste, tisseur, peintre, orfevre, architecte, mu- 
sicien, poete, regardera en lui et autour de lui pour 
y chercher la beaute. II la reverra encore plus 

*p. 164. 



422 Democracy in America 

parfaite qui'il ne la devine attirante dans sa son- 
gerie d'humain. Pour Tatteindre, pour la symbo- 
liser en une oeuvre, rien ne lui coutera. II sacrifiera 
sans meme s'y arreter sa fortune, son repos, sa 
famille. S'il reste pauvre, incompris, abandonne, 
il se sent paye par la joie d'avoir congu et cree. 
Son bonheur depassera ce que la naissance, la ri- 
chesse, la vanite, le pouvoir peuvent offrir. Ces 
regies divines restent encore a jaillir en Amerique."* 

Owing to the newness of American civiliza- 
tion, there is a deficiency of well-organized types 
and models to serve as guides to men of genius. 
"Individuality may easily be aggressive and yet 
futile," says Cooley, "because not based on the 
training afforded by well-organized types — like 
the fruitless valor of the individual soldier. Mr. 
Brownell points out that the prevalence of this 
sort of individuality in our art and life is a point 
of contrast between us and the French. Paris, 
compared with New York, has the 'organic quality 
which results from variety of types,' as distin- 
guished from variety of individuals. * * * When 
a populous society springs up rapidly from a few 
transplanted seeds, its structure, however vast, 
is necessarily somewhat simple and monotonous. 
A thousand towns, ten thousand churches, a mil- 
lion houses, are built on the same models, and the 
people and the social institutions do not altogether 
escape a similar poverty of types. No doubt this is 
sometimes exaggerated, and America does present 

* p. 143. 



The Industrial Arts 423 

many picturesque variations, but only a reckless 
enthusiasm will equal them with those of Europe. 
How unspeakably inferior in external aspect and 
in many inner conditions of culture must any re- 
cent civilization be to that, let us say, of Italy, 
whose accumulated riches represent the deposit of 
several thousand years. * * * We must remember, 
too, that the culture of the Old World is chiefly 
a class culture, and that the immigrants have 
mostly come from a class that had no great part 
in it. 

*'With this goes the loss of the visible monu- 
ments of culture inherited from the past — archi- 
tecture, painting, sculpture, ancient universities 
and the like. Burne-Jones, the English painter, 
speaking of the commercial city in which he spent 
his youth, says: * * * <if there had been one cast 
from ancient Greek sculpture, or one faithful copy 
of a great Italian picture, to be seen in Birming- 
ham when I was a boy, I should have begun to 
paint ten years before I did * * * even the silent 
presence of great works in your town will pro- 
duce an impression on those who see them, and 
the next generation will, without knowing how or 
why, find it easier to learn than this one does 
whose surroundings are so unlovely.' "* 

In this connection, Matthew Arnold reflects 
that "If we in England were without the cathe- 
drals, parish churches, and castles of the Catholic 
and feudal age, and without the houses of the 
Elizabethan age, but had only the Jtowns and build- 

*P. 169. 



424 Democracy in America 

ings which the rise of our middle class has created 
in the modern age, we should be much the same 
case as the Americans. We should be living with 
much the same absence of training for the sense 
of beauty through the eye, from the aspect of out- 
ward things." -|- * * * 

*'The human problem, then, is as yet solved 
in the United States most imperfectly; a great 
void exists in the civilization over there : a want 
of what is elevated and beautiful, of what is in- 
teresting."* 

Art products of a high order can come only 
from a people having a common tradition. In the 
early decades, America had a culture based chiefly 
upon English traditions; but the American popu- 
lation of to-day, much more heterogeneous, has 
not had time to develop anything in common. Of 
the difficulty of assimilating so many foreign ele- 
ments, Cooley says: "It is as if a kettle of broth 
were cooking quietly on the fire, when some one 
should come in and add suddenly a great pailful 
of raw meats, vegetables and spices — a rich com- 
bination, possibly, but likely to require much boil- 
ing. That fine English sentiment that came down 
to us through the colonists more purely, perhaps, 
than to the English in the old country, is passing 
away — as a distinct current, that is — lost in the 
flood of cosmopolitan life. Before us, no doubt, is 
a larger humanity, but behind is a cherished spirit 
that can hardly live again; and, like the boy who 
leaves home, we must turn our thoughts from an 

1 p. 17:^. -p. 181. 



The Industrial Arts 425 

irrevocable past and go hopefully on to we know 
not what."* 

In America the demand for art products has 
been so great that the artist has been tempted to 
repeat himself, to work in too great haste, and 
therefore has had little time or incentive to orig- 
inate. "Haste and the superficiality and strain 
which attend upon it," says Cooley, "are widely 
and insidiously destructive of good work in our 
day. No other condition of mind or of society — 
not ignorance, poverty, oppression or hate — kills 
art as haste does. Almost any phase of life may 
be ennobled if there is only calm enough in which 
the brooding mind may do its perfect work upon 
it; but out of hurry nothing noble ever did or can 
emerge. In art human nature should come to a 
total, adequate expression; a spiritual tendency 
should be perfected and recorded in calmness and 
joy. But ours is, on the whole, a time of stress, of 
the habit of incomplete work; its products are un- 
lovely and unrestful and such as the future will 
have no joy in. The pace is suited only to turn out 
mediocre goods on a vast scale. 

"It is, to put the matter otherwise, a loud 
time. The newspapers, the advertising, the gen- 
eral insistence of suggestion, have an effect of din, 
so that one feels that he must raise his voice to be 
heard, and the whispers of the gods are hard to 
eatch. Men whose voices are naturally low and 
fine easily lose this trait in the world and begin 
to shout like the rest. That is to say, they exag- 

* p. 170. 



426 Democracy in America 

gerate and repeat and advertise and caricature, 
saying too much in the hope that a little may be 
heard. Of course, in the long run this is a fatal 
delusion; nothing will really be listened to except 
that whose quiet truth makes it worth hearing; 
but it is one so rooted in the general state of things 
that few escape it. Even those who preserve the 
lower tone do so with an effort which is in itself 
disquieting. 

"A strenuous state of mind is always partial 
and special, sacrificing scope to intensity, and more 
fitted for execution than insight. It is useful at 
times, but if habitual, cuts us off from that sea of 
sub-conscious spirit from which all original power 
flows. 'The world of art,' says Paul Bourget, 
speaking of America, 'requires less self-conscious- 
ness — an impulse of life which forgets itself, the 
alternations of dreamy idleness with fervid execu- 
tion/ So Henry James remarks that we have prac- 
tically lost the faculty of attention, meaning, I sup- 
pose, that unstrenuous, brooding sort of attention 
required to produce or appreciate works of art — 
and as regards the prevalent type of business or 
professional mind this seems quite true.'"^ 

"The cause of strain is radical and somewhat 
feverish change, not democracy as such. A large 
part of the people, particularly the farming class, 
are little affected by it, and there are indications 
that in America, where it has been greater than 
elsewhere, the worst is now over.^f 

*p. 171. ip. 173. 



The Industrial Arts 427 

The future of American art, as that of every 
other country, will depend upon the efficiency with 
which social conditions are adapted to the needs of 
the people. In the useful arts an aesthetic excel- 
lence is possible only when the instrument or con- 
trivance is perfectly adapted to its purpose. A 
perfect product forms a standard or ideal for in- 
numerable copies. The same principle applies to 
the fine arts. Houses better adapted to their pur- 
pose result in standard types of architecture. Tem- 
perate living, wholesome food, play-grounds, and 
healthful work make for good models for sculp- 
ture. The conservation of the forests, the planting 
of trees, flowers, and shrubs, and the making of 
lakes and lawns, furnish the ideal subject-matter 
and the inspiration for landscape painting. The 
widening of the doors of opportunity for the 
masses, the dispensation of more justice, the more 
willing care of those who are the victims of mis- 
fortune, and, in fact, every step in the direction 
of increased social efficiency, necessarily multiply 
the number of excellent models which supply both 
the subject-matter and the inspiration for the poet, 
the painter and the sculptor. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 
MANNERS. 

AMERICAN MANNERS UNBEARABLE TO MOST FOREIGN- 
ERS—UNFAVORABLE COMMENTS OF WALTER SCOTT. 
MRS. TROLLOPE AND OTHERS— DICKENS FOUND 
MANNERS NOT SO BAD AS MRS. TROLLOPE REPRE- 
SENTED THEM— DE TOCQUEVILLE PREFERS DEMO- 
CRATIC MANNERS TO THOSE OF AN ARISTOCRACY- 
FOREIGNERS MISUNDERSTAND AMERICAN MANNERS 
—SYDNEY SMITH DEFENDS AMERICAN MANNERS- 
CONTRAST BETWEEN THE STANDARD OF GOOD MAN- 
NERS IN A DEMOCRACY AND AN ARISTOCRACY. 

It goes without saying that, in the early stages 
of American development, and later in the back- 
woods and frontiers, the manners of the people 
were lacking in refinement and grace, and in many 
respects very rough and offensive to good taste. 
The people of any new country are apt to fall into 
conversational habits and ways of doing things 
which shock the sensibilities of the stranger. They 
act towards each other with the utmost frankness, 
and, since their life is rather dull, they have the 
curiosity and inquisitiveness of children. The man- 
ners of a pioneer period are hard to outgrow and 
often find outcroppings in individuals otherwise 
highly cultured. Foreigners who have visited 
America, or who have met Americans in their own 
country, have often taken notice of these outcrop- 

[428] 



Manners 429 

pings. The impression which Americans ' made 
upon Walter Scott is expressed by him as follows: 
"They are yet rude in their ideas of social inter- 
course, and totally ignorant, speaking generally, 
of all the art of good breeding, which consists 
chiefly in a postponement of one's own petty 
wishes or comforts to those of others. By rude 
questions and observations, an absolute disrespect 
of other's feelings, and a ready indulgence in their 
own, they make one feverish in their company, 
though perhaps you may be ashamed to confess 
it."* 

Of manners on a steamboat on the Mississippi 
river, Mrs. Trollope says: "The total want of all 
the usual courtesies of the table, the voracious 
rapidity with which the viands were seized and 
devoured, the strange uncouth phrases and pro- 
nunciations; the loathsome spitting, from the con- 
tamination of which it was absolutely impossible 
to protect our dresses; the frightful manner of 
feeding with their knives, till the whole blade 
seemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more 
frightful manner of cleaning the teeth afterwards 
with a pocket-knife, soon forced us to feel that we 
were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and 
majors of the old world; and that the dinner hour 
was to be anything rather than an hour of enjoy- 
ment."t 

Speaking of his stop in Louisville, Kentucky, 
in 1817, Fearon says: "The breakfast consists of 



♦Brooks, 194. t p. 20. 



430 Democracy in America 

a profuse supply of fish, flesh and fowl, which is 
consumed with a rapidity truly extraordinary."* 

Mrs. Trollope could never reconcile herself to 
the American habit of chewing tobacco. "I hardly 
know any annoyance," she says, "so deeply repug- 
nant to English feeling, as the incessant, remorse- 
less spitting of Americans." J =1? * * "I am 
inclined to think this most vile and universal habit 
of chewing tobacco is the cause of a remarkable 
peculiarity in the male physiognomy of Amer- 
icans; their lips are almost uniformly thin and 
compressed."** 

Speaking of the guests at a hotel in Memphis, 
she remarks that: "They ate in perfect silence, 
and with such astonishing rapidity that their din- 
ner was over literally before ours was begun; the 
instant they ceased to eat they darted from the 
table in the same moody silence which they had 
preserved since they entered the room, and a sec- 
ond set took their places, who performed their 
silent parts in the same manner. The only sounds 
heard were those produced by the knives and 
forks, with the unceasing chorus of coughing, etc."t 

In Cincinnati Mrs. Trollope found a "total 
and universal want of manners, both in males and 
females.'^ ft She did not like the style of 
eating watermelon in Cincinnati. "Many wagon- 
loads of watermelons," she says, "were brought to 
market every day, and I was sure to see groups of 
men, women, and children, seated on the pavement 

* p. 251. t p. 16. « * p. 206. t p. 26. ft P- 43. 



Manners 431 

round the spot where they were sold, sucking in 
prodigious quantities of this watery fruit. Their 
manner of devouring them is extremely unpleas- 
ant; the huge fruit is cut into half a dozen sec- 
tions, of about a foot long, and then, dripping as it 
is with water, applied to the mouth, from either 
side of which pour copious streams of the fluid, 
while ever and anon, a mouthful of the hard black 
seeds are shot out in all directions, to the great 
annoyance of all within reach. When I first tasted 
this fruit I thought it very vile stuff, indeed, but be- 
fore the end of the season we all learned to like it. 
When taken with claret and sugar, it makes delic- 
ious wine and water."* 

At a theatre in Cincinnati Mrs. Trollope saw 
Hamlet played by Mr. Forrest, and she left in dis- 
gust at the end of the third act. **Men came into 
the lower, tier of boxes," she says, ''without their 
coats; and I have seen shirt sleeves tucked up to 
the shoulder; the spitting was incessant, and the 
mixed smell of onions and whiskey was enough 
to make one feel even the Drakes* acting dearly 
bought by the obligation of enduring its accom- 
paniments. The bearing and attitudes of the men 
are perfectly indescribable ; the heels thrown 
higher than the head, the entire rear of the person 
presented to the audience, the whole length sup- 
ported on the benches, are among the varieties that 
these exquisite posture-masters exhibit. The noises, 
too, were perpetual, and of the most unpleasant 
kind; the applause is expressed by cries and by 

*p. 76. 



432 Democracy in America 

thumping with the feet, instead of clapping; and 
when a patriotic fit seized them, and 'Yankee Doo- 
dle' was called for, every man seemed to think his 
reputation as a citizen depended on the noise he 
made/'* 

Again Mrs. Trollope was shocked at the bad 
manners exhibited at the Chatham theatre in New 
York, where she saw Miss Mitford's Rienzi. **The 
interest must have been great," she says, "for till 
the curtain fell, I saw not one-quarter of the queer 
things around me; then I observed in the front row 
of a dress-box a lady performing the most mater- 
nal office possible ; several gentlemen without their 
coats, and a general air of contempt for the de- 
cencies of life, certainly more than usually revolt- 
ing."** At the Park theatre she saw Mrs. 
Austin in Cinderella and some more shocking man- 
ners. "The piece was extremely well got up," she 
says, "and on this occasion we saw the Park the- 
atre to advantage, for it was filled with well- 
dressed company; but still we saw many *yet un- 
razored lips' polluted with the grim tinge of the 
hateful tobacco, and heard, without ceasing, the 
spitting, which of course is its consequence/'f 

Even the grandeur of Niagara Falls was 
marred for Mrs. Trollope by bad manners, and 
obscured by the smoke of tobacco. , "On one occa- 
sion," she says, "when we were in the beautiful 
gallery, at the back of the hotel, which overlooks 
the horse-shoe fall, we saw the booted leg of one 

* p. 117. ** p. 307. t p. 307. 



Manners 433 

of this graceful race (of dandies) protruded from 
the window which commands the view, while his 
person was thrown back in his chair, and his head 
enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke." * 

In regard to American conversational powers, 
Mrs. Trollope makes this comment: "I have lis- 
tened to much dull and heavy conversation in 
America, but rarely to any that I could strictly 
call silly (if I except the everywhere privileged 
class of very young ladies). They appear to me 
to have clear heads and active intellects; are more 
ignorant on subjects that are only of conventional 
value, than on such that are of intrinsic import- 
ance; but there is no charm, no grace in their 
conversation. I very seldom, during my whole 
stay in the country, heard a sentence elegantly 
turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of 
an American. There is always something either in 
the expression or the accent that jars the feelings 
and shocks the taste."** 

Some foreigners do not like the New England 
nasal twang. Kipling, for instance, turned up his 
ears at this and remarked as follows: "Oliver 
Wendell Holmes says that the Yankee schoolmarm, 
the cider, and the salt codfish of the Eastern states 
are responsible for what he calls a nasal accent. I 
know better. They stole books from across the 
water without paying for 'em, and the snort of 
delight was fixed in their nostrils forever by a just 
Providence."! 



p. 350. ** p. 43. t American Notes. 



434 Democracy in America 

Charles Dickens, no less than Mrs. Trollope, 
was thoroughly disgusted with our use of tobacco. 
"As Washington may be called the headquarters 
of tobacco-tinctured saliva," he says, ''the time is 
come when I must confess, without any disguise, 
that the prevalence of those two odious practices 
of chewing and expectorating began about this 
time to be anything but agreeable, and soon be- 
came most offensive and sickening. In all the pub- 
lic places of America this filthy custom is recog- 
nized. In the courts of law the judge has his spit- 
toon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner 
his; while the jurymen and spectators are provided 
for, as so many men who in the course of nature 
must desire to spit incessantly. In the hospitals 
the students of medicine are requested, by notices 
upon the walls, to eject their tobacco juice into the 
boxes provided for that purpose, and not to dis- 
color the stairs. In public buildings visitors are 
implored, through the same agency, to squirt the 
essence of their quids, or 'plugs,' as I have heard 
them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of 
sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not 
about the bases of the marble columns. But in 
some parts this custom is inseparably mixed up 
with every meal and morning call, and with all the 
transactions of social life. The stranger, who fol- 
lows in the track I took myself, will find it in its 
full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming 
recklessness, at Washington. And let him not per- 
suade himself (as I once did, to my shame), that 
previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The 



Manners 435 

thing is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot 
be outdone. "t * * * 

"Both Houses are handsomely carpeted; but 
the state to which these carpets are reduced by 
the universal disregard of the spittoon with which 
every honorable member is accommodated, and 
the extraordinary improvements on the pattern 
which are squirted and dabbed upon it in every 
direction, do not admit of being described. I will 
merely observe that I strongly recommend all 
strangers not to look at the floor; and if they hap- 
pen to drop anything, though it be their purse, not 
to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any ac- 
count."* 

Dickens was not at all pleased with the habit 
of American men of hoisting their heels above 
their heads. He remarks that, when Martin Chuz- 
zlewit arrived at a western town, he looked out 
of the car window, and, on the veranda of a near^ 
by hotel, he beheld "a great many pairs of boots 
and shoes, and the smoke of a great many cigars, 
but no other evidences of human habitation. By 
slow degrees, however, some heads and shoulders 
appeared, and connecting themselves with the 
boots and shoes, led to the discovery that certain 
gentlemen boarders, who had a fancy for putting 
their heels where the gentlemen boarders in other 
countries usually put their heads, were enjoying 
themselves after their own manner in the cool of 
the evening/' 



i American Notes. * American Notes. 



436 Democracy in America 

De Tocqueville, looking more at the essence 
than the form of manners, thought that manners 
in a democracy are more sincere than in an aris- 
tocracy. ''Nothing is more prejudicial to democ- 
racy/' he says, ''than its outward forms of be- 
havior; many men would willingly endure its vices, 
who cannot support its manners. I cannot, how- 
ever, admit that there is nothing commendable in 
the manners of a democratic people. Amongst 
aristocratic nations, all who live within reach of 
the first class in society commonly strain to be like 
it, which gives rise to ridiculous and insipid imita- 
tions. As a democratic ' people does not possess 
any models of high breeding, at least it escapes 
the daily necessity of seeing wretched copies of 
them. In democracies manners are never so re- 
fined as amongst aristocratic nations, but on the 
other hand they are never so coarse. "t * * * 

"Amongst a democratic people manners are 
neither so tutored nor so uniform, but they are 
frequently more sincere. They form, as it were, 
a light and loosely woven veil, through which the 
real feelings and private opinions of each indi- 
vidual are easily discernible. The form and the 
substance of human actions often, therefore, stand 
in closer relation; and if the great picture of 
human life be less embellished, it is more true. 
Thus it may be said, in one sen^e, that the effect 
of democracy is not exactly to give men any par- 
ticular manners, but to prevent them from having 
manners at all."* 

t p. 229. * If, 229. 



Manners 437 

*De Tocqueville also thought that democracy 
tended to soften manners; that the equality of con- 
ditions induced general sympathy and good-will 
among all classes. He says: *'We perceive that for 
several ages social conditions have tended to equal- 
ity, and we discover that in the course of the same 
period the manners of society have been softened. 
Are these two things merely contemporaneous, or 
does any secret link exist between them, so that 
the one cannot go on without making the other 
advance? Several causes may concur to render 
the manners of a people less rude ; but, of all these 
causes, the most powerful appears to me to be the 
equality of conditions. Equality of conditions and 
growing civility in manners are, then, in my eyes, 
not only contemporaneous occurrences, but correla- 
tive f«cts."t * * * 

"When all men are irrevocably marshalled in 
an aristocratic community, according to their pro- 
fessions, their property, and their birth, the mem- 
bers of each class, considering themselves as chil- 
dren of the same family, cherish a constant and 
lively sympathy towards each other, which can 
never be felt in an equal degree by the citizens 
of a democracy. But the same feeling does not 
exist between the several classes towards each other. 
Amongst an aristocratic people each caste has its 
own opinions, feelings, rights, manners, and modes 
of living. Thus the men of whom each caste is 
composed do not resemble the mass of their fellow- 
citizens ; they do not think or feel in the same man- 

ill, 172 



438 Democracy in America 

ner, and they scarcely believe that they belong to 
the same human race. They cannot, therefore, 
thoroughly understand what others feel, nor judge 
of others by themselves. "f * * * 

"When the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, 
who all belonged to the aristocracy by birth or edu- 
cation, relate the tragical end of a noble, their 
grief flows apace; whereas, they tell you at a 
breath, and without wincing, of massacres and tor- 
tures inflicted on the common sort of people. Not 
that these writers felt habitual hatred or sys- 
tematic disdain for the people; war between the 
several classes of the community was not yet de- 
clared. They were impelled by an instinct rather 
than by a passion ; as they had formed no clear 
notion of a poor man's sufferings, they cared but 
little for his fate."tt * * * 

"When all the ranks of a community are 
nearly equal, as all men think and feel in nearly 
the same manner, each of them may judge in a 
moment of the sensations of all the others ; he casts 
a rapid glance upon himself, and that is enough. 
There is no wretchedness into which he cannot 
readily enter, and a secret instinct reveals to him 
its extent. It signifies not that strangers or foes 
be the sufferers; imagination puts him in their 
place; something like a personal feeling is mingled 
with his pity, and makes himself suffer whilst the 
body of his fellow-creature is in torture. In demo- 
cratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for one 
another; but they display general compassion for 

t II, 173. ti 174. 



Manners 439 

the members of the human race. They inflict no 
useless ills; and they are happy to relieve the 
griefs of others, when they can do so without much 
hurting themselves; they are not disinterested, but 
they are humane. 

"Although the Americans, have, in a manner, 
reduced egotism to a social and philosophical the- 
ory, they are nevertheless extremely open to com- 
passion. In no country is criminal justice admin- 
istered with more mildness than in the United 
States. Whilst the English seem disposed care- 
fully to retain the bloody traces of the dark ages 
in their penal legislation, the Americans have al- 
most expunged capital punishment from their 
codes. North America is, I think, the only one 
country upon earth in which the life of no one 
citizen has been taken for a political offense in the 
course of the last fifty years. The circumstance 
which conclusively shows that this singular mild- 
ness of the Americans arises chiefly from their 
social condition, is the manner in which they treat 
their slaves. Perhaps there is not, upon the whole, 
a single European colony in the New World in 
which the physical condition of the blacks is less 
severe than in the United States; yet the slaves 
still endure horrid sufferings there^ and are con- 
stantly exposed to barbarous punishments. It is 
easy to perceive that the lot of these unhappy be- 
ings inspires their masters with but little compas- 
sion, and that they look upon slavery, not only as 
an institution which is profitable to them, but as 
an evil which does not affect them. Thus the same 



440 Democracy in America 

man who is full of humanity towards his fellow- 
creatures when they are at the same time his 
equals, becomes insensible to their afflictions as 
soon as that equality ceases."* 

Manners in an aristocracy, De Tocqueville 
goes on to say, are constrained ; in a democracy 
they are natural. "As aristocratic pride is still ex- 
tremely great amongst the English, and as the 
limits of aristocracy are ill-defined, everybody lives 
in constant dread lest advantages should be taken 
of his familiarity. Unable to judge at once of the 
social position of those he meets, an Englishman 
prudently avoids all contact with them. Men are 
afraid lest some slight service rendered should 
draw them into an unsuitable acquaintance; they 
dread civilities, and they avoid the obtrusive 
gratitude of a stranger quite as much as his hatred. 
Many people attribute these singular anti-social pro- 
pensities, and the reserved and taciturn bearing of 
the English to purely physical causes. T may admit 
that there is something of it in their race, but much 
more of it is attributable to their social condition, 
as is proved by the contrast of the Americans. 

''In America, where the privileges of birth 
never existed, and where riches confer no peculiar 
rights on their possessors, men unacquainted with 
each other are very ready to frequent the same 
places, and find neither peril nor advantage in the 
free interchange of their thoughts. If they meet 
by accident, they neither seek nor avoid inter- 
course ; their manner is, therefore, natural, frank, 

*II. 176. 



Manners 441 

and open; it is easy to see that they can hardly 
expect or apprehend anything from each other, 
and that they do not care to display any more than 
to conceal, their position in the world. If their 
demeanor is often cold and serious, it is never 
haughty or constrained; and if they do not con- 
verse, it is because they are not in a humor to 
talk, not because they think it their interest to be 
silent. In a foreign country two Americans are at 
once friends, simply because they are Americans. 
They are repulsed by no prejudice; they are at- 
tracted by their common country. For two Eng- 
lishmen the same blood is not enough; they must 
be brought together by the same rank. The Amer- 
icans remark this unsociable mood of the English 
as much as the French do, and they are not less 
astonished by it. Yet the Americans are connected 
with England by their origin, their religion, their 
language, and partially by their manners; they 
only differ in their social condition. It may there- 
fore be inferred that the reserve of the English 
proceeds from the constitution of their country 
much more than from that of its inhabitants/'* 

"That species of hauteur," says John Brad- 
bury, discussing American manners in 1819, "which 
one class of society in some countries show in 
their intercourse with the other, is here utterly 
unknown. * * * j have travelled near ten 
thousand miles in the United States, and never re- 
ceived the least incivility or affront."t 

* II, 180. t p. 313. 



442 Democracy in America 

Dickens did not find manners in America quite 
so bad as Mrs. Trollope had represented them, 
except in the matter of the tobacco habit. Re- 
ferring to his visit to Cincinnati, he says: 'The 
society with which I mingled was intelligent, 
courteous and agreeable. * * * As in every 
other place I visited, the judges here were gentle- 
men of high character and attainments."* 
Of manners on a steamboat on the Dela- 
ware, he remarks: *'We all sat down to a 
comfortable breakfast in the cabin below, where 
there was no more hurry or confusion than at such 
a meal in England, and where there was certainly 
greater politeness exhibited than at most of our 
stage-coach banquets."* In regard to a break- 
fast on a Potomac boat, he observes that: 
'There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the 
despatch of the meal. It is longer than a traveling 
breakfast with us, more orderly, and more po- 
lite."* Upon landing at Boston, Dickens was im- 
pressed by the ''politeness and good humor" of the 
Custom House officers.* "The tone of so- 
ciety in Boston," he says, "is one of perfect 
politeness, courtesy, and good-breeding."* When 
in Washington, Dickens called upon the 
great champion of the backwoodsmen, Andrew 
Jackson, and observed that "the expression of his 
face was mild and pleasant, and his manner was 
remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly and agree- 
able."* 



* American Notes. 



Manners 443 

Foreigners generally misunderstand American 
manners. Accustomed to humiliating forms of 
obeisance from the serving class in their own 
country, they are offended by the absence of ser- 
vility in the same class in America. They seem to 
think that the notion of equality has spoiled both 
their manner and their morals. In this connection, 
Burne-Jones writes as follows: "Baedeker says 
that the traveller in the United States 'should from 
the outset reconcile himself to the absence of def- 
erence, or servility, on the part of those he con- 
siders his social inferiors' ; and this is a very good 
piece of advice, for, if he doesn't do so he will 
probably live in a perpetual state of indignation 
and annoyance, which is quite unecessary if he 
adapts himself to his surroundings. 

"The absence of the courtesy one is accus- 
tomed to from carmen, tradespeople, servants, etc., 
is very noticeable at first; later, one becomes accus- 
tomed to it, and realizes that it arises not from 
any desire to be rude or offensive, but from a 
combination of causes — partly from an honest 
ignorance of what constitutes good manners, and 
partly from a perfectly sincere conviction^ gravely 
entertained, that they are really every bit as good 
as you are, in a country where all social distinc- 
tions are supposed to be non-existent. Taken on 
these terms one will nearly always find these peo- 
ple good-natured and obliging; and however for- 
eign to traditions of our own country, one soon 
gets to feel that there is something fine about this 
theory of equality among men. Simple and gen- 



444 Democracy in America 

uine as this feeling is in America, instead of 
estranging one, it does really seem to bring one 
nearer to one's fellow-creatures — to those I aiean 
who have been handicapped in life, and haven't 
had as much money* or been as well educated as 
one has oneself, which, I suppose, is what we mean 
when we speak of 'inferiors' "f * h< * 
"The old woman who does the washing is referred 
to by her friends as a *lady'; and they are all 
'gentlemen' to one another, from the man who 
'checks' your baggage to the vender of peanuts 
round the corner."* 

One of our shortcomings, especially charged 
up to us by the English in the early days, was our 
inquisitiveness — our curiosity to pry into the his- 
tory of a new acquaintance. In this matter, how- 
ever, Sydney Smith gallantly takes our part. 
"There is nothing," he says, "which an English- 
man enjoys more than the pleasure of sulkiness — 
of not being forced to hear a word from anybody 
which may occasion to him the necessity of reply- 
ing. It is not so much that Mr. Bull disdains to 
talk, as that Mr. Bull has nothing to say. His 
forefathers have been out of spirits for six or seven 
hundred years, and seeing nothing but fog and 
vapor, he is out of spirits, too; and when there is 
no selling or buying, or no business to settle, he 
prefers being alone and looking at the fire. If any 
gentleman were in distress, he would willingly lend 
a helping hand, but he thinks it no part of neigh- 
borhood to talk to a person because he happens to 

t p. 69. * p. 45. 



Manners 445 

be near him. In short, with many excellent qual- 
ities, it must be acknowledged that the English are 
the most disagreeable of all the nations of Europe, 
more surly and morose, with less disposition to 
please, to exert themselves out of their way. They 
are content with Magna Charta and Trial by Jury; 
and think they are not bound to excell the rest of 
the world in small behavior, if they are superior to 
them in great institutions. * * * 

**The curiosity for which Americans are so 
much laughed at, is not only venial, but laudible. 
Where men live in woods and forests, as is the 
case, of course, in remote Ameircan settlements, it 
is the duty of every man to gratify the inhabitants 
by telling them his name, place, age, office, virtues, 
crime, children, fortune, and remarks: And with 
fellow-travellers, it seems to be almost a matter of 
necessity to do so. When men ride together for 
300 or 400 miles through woods and prairies^ it is 
of the greatest importance that they should be able 
to guess at subjects most agreeable to each other, 
and to multiply their common topics. Without 
knowing who your companion is, it is difficult to 
know both what to say and what to avoid."* 

The standard of good manners in an aristoc- 
racy is not the same as that of a democracy. An 
aristocratic people value the form more than the 
kind of feeling which it covers. A democratic 
people value the intent more than the form. If 
one's attitude or intention is friendly, a democratic 



* Essay on America. 



446 Democracy in America 

people will not be easily offended if one behaves in 
an entirely unconventional manner, or '.ven in a 
way which violates good taste. John Graham 
Brooks relates an incident which illustrates very 
aptly this contrast of standards. He says: ''I was 
once on a very trying stage drive of several days in 
the West. More passengers than could be decently 
accommodated had to get through. A woman of 
the party had won every heart at the journey's 
end by a kindness and tact which prevented minor 
quarrels over the most desirable seats or rooms at 
the hotel. It was all done with entire unconscious- 
ness. Yet she would openly chew gum by the 
hour, use the knife long and industriously upon 
her finger nails, and, after each meal, elaborately 
remove the food from her teeth with her hat-pin. 
One of the party, who would not speak to her the 
first day, said at the end, 'That is the most natur- 
ally kind person I ever saw. She carried us in her 
heart the whole way!"* Harriet Martineau, 
in speaking of the unrefined ways of the 
Americans, says that, as far as good-will and the 
disposition to help others is concerned, ''they have 
the best manners I have ever seen."** 

''Common politeness," remarks Alexander 
Francis, "is more common and general in America 
than in any other country."! 

Lady Emeline Stuart-Wortley, writing in 1851, 
says: "I like the Americans more and more; 
either they have improved wonderfully lately, or 
else the criticisms of them have been cruelly oxag- 

* p. 210. ** p. 211. t p. 27. 



Manners 447 

gerated. They are particularly courteous and 
obliging, and seem amiably anxious that foreigners 
should carry away a favorable impression of 
them."* 

As illustrating the kindly feeling and good- 
fellowship which characterizes American man- 
ners, Henry Van Dyke relates the following inci- 
dents: "Our letter carrier at Princeton never 
made any difference in the treatment of my neigh- 
bor, President Cleveland, and myself. He was 
equally kind to both of us, and I may add cheerful 
in rendering little friendly services outside of his 
strict duty. My guides in the backwoods of Maine 
and the Adirondacks regard me as a comrade who 
curiously enough makes his living by writing 
books, but who also shows that he knows the real 
value of life by spending his vacation in the forest. 
As a matter of fact, they think much more of their 
own skill with the axe and paddle than of my sup- 
posed ability with the pen. They have not had a 
touch of subservience in their manner or their 
talk. They carry their packs, and chop the wood, 
and spread the tents, and make the bed of green 
boughs. And then, at night, around the camp- 
fire, they smoke their pipes with me, and the ques- 
tion is. Who can tell the best story ?"t 

"In spite of all that has been written on the 
subject," says Archer, "there is perhaps very little 
difference between the manners of the American 
and the Englishman. Simply as a matter of obser- 
vation, the differences between the English and 

* I, 40. ip. 109. 



448 Democracy in America 

Italian manners hit you in the eye, while the differ- 
ences between American and English manners are 
really microscopic; and manners, I take it, are 
the outward and visible signs of temperament."* 
This microscopic difference is illustrated in a 
remark by Muirhead as follows: '1 remember 
when I pointed out to a Boston girl that an Amer- 
ican actor in a piece before us, representing high 
life in London, was committing a gross solecism in 
moistening his pencil in his mouth before adding 
his address to his visiting card, she trumped my 
criticism at once by the information that a dis- 
tinguished English journalist, with a handle to his 
name, who recently made a successful lecturing 
tour in the United States, openly and deliberately 
moistened his thumb in the same ingenious fashion 
in turning over the leaves of his manuscript "f 

* p. 56. t p. 94. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 
SCIENCE. 

AMERICANS EARLY ADEPTS IN PRACTICAL SCIENCE— 
BUT THE GENERAL STIR AND TUMULT HAVE NOT 
BEEN FAVORABLE TO PURE SCIENCE— RECENTLY 
SCIENCE HAS MADE NOTABLE STRIDES— INSTITU- 
TIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE— SCIEN- 
TIFIC ORGANIZATIONS AND PRODUCTIONS— PROG- 
RESS IN PHILOLOGY, ECONOMICS, SOCIOLOGY, PHYS- 
ICS, ASTRONOMY, BIOLOGY AND OTHER SCIENCES- 
DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES IN THE SCIENCE OF 
HISTORY. 

•'In America/' says De Tocqueville, ''the purely 
practical part of science is admirably understood, 
and careful attention is paid to the theoretical por- 
tion which is immediately requisite to application. 
On this head the Americans always display a clear, 
free, original, and inventive power of mind. But 
hardly anyone in the United States devotes himself 
to the essentially theoretical and abstract portion 
of human knowledge. In this respect the Amer- 
icans carry to excess a tendency which is, I think, 
discernible, though in a less degree, amongst all 
democratic nations. 

''Nothing is more necessary to the culture of 
the higher sciences, or of the more elevated de- 
partments of science, than meditation ; and noth- 
ing is less suited to meditation than the structure 

[449] 



450 Democracy in America 

of democratic society. We do not find there, as 
amongst an aristocratic people, one class which 
clings to a state of repose because it is well off; 
and another which does not venture to stir because 
it despairs of improving its condition. Everyone 
is actively in motion; some in quest of power, 
others of gain. In the midst of this universal 
tumult — this incessant conflict of jarring interests 
— this continual stride of men after fortune — 
where is that calm to be found which is necessary 
for the deeper combinations of the intellect? How 
can the mind dwell upon any single point, when 
everything whirls around it, and man himself is 
swept and beaten onwards by the heavy current 
which rolls all things in its course ?"t * * * 

''Men who live in democratic communities not 
only seldom indulge in meditation, but they nat- 
urally entertain very little esteem for it. A demo- 
cratic state of society and democratic Institutions 
plunge the greater part of men in constant active 
life; and the habits of mind which are suited to 
an active life are not always suited to a contem- 
plative one."tt * * * 

*'In aristocratic ages, science is more partic- 
ularly called upon to furnish gratification to the 
mind; in democracies to the body. J * * * 

'If the democratic principle does not, on the 
one hand, induce men to cultivate science for its 
own sake, on the other, it enormously increases the 
number of those who do cultivate it. Nor is it 

ill, 43. * ttP 44. J II, 46. 



Science 451 

credible that, amongst so great a multitude no 
speculative genius should from time to time arise, 
inflamed by the love of truth alone."* 

Since De Tocqueville's time pure science has 
made notable strides. Miinsterberg thinks, how- 
ever, that scientific work in our universities is 
hampered by lack of opportunity of the professors 
for research, and by lack of proper stimulus there- 
to. But American universities, he says, are well 
equipped with laboratories, libraries, and museums. 
Various institutions of our national government 
contribute greatly to the advancement of science, 
as also the Carnegie Institute, and many other 
special scientific institutions. America has many 
scientific societies federated into a National Acad- 
emy of Science, and also many scientific maga- 
zines. 

"Externally, in the first place, America makes 
a massive showing," he says, ''even if we leave 
out of account philosophical literature of the more 
popular sort. While, for example, England has 
only two really important philosophical magazines, 
America has at least five which are as good as the 
English; and if philosophy is taken in the custom- 
ary wide sense, sociological and pedagogical jour- 
nals must be added, which are nowhere sur- 
passed."* The faculties of American univer- 
sities turn out a great many valuable scien- 
tific publications. Americans have made notable 
contributions to philology, especially to Oriental 
philology. Special expeditions have been sent out 

* II, 47. tp. 437. 



452 Democracy in America 

to the East, and much has been done to advance 
the study of cuneiform inscriptions. "The Assy- 
rian collections of the University of Pennsylvania 
are accounted, in many respects, the most complete 
in existence. Its curator, Hilprecht, is well known, 
and Lyon, Haupt, and others almost as well. Whit- 
ney, of Yale, was undoubtedly the leader in San- 
krit. Lanman, of Harvard, is his most famous 
successor, and besides him are Jackson, Buck, 
Bloomfield, and others. Toy is the great authority 
on Semitic languages."* Progress in eco- 

nomics, sociology, mathematics and astronomy 
is represented by a long list of distinguished 
names. ''No country in the world has so many 
well-equipped observatories as the United States, 
and no other country manufactures such perfect 
astronomical lenses. America has perfected the 
technique of astronomy. Roland, for instance, has 
improved the astronomical spectroscope, and Pick- 
ering has made brilliant contributions to photom- 
etry. The catalogue of stars by Gould and Lang- 
ley is an indispensable work, and America has 
contributed its full share to the observation of 
asteroids and comets. Newcomb, however, v/ho is 
the leader since forty years, has done the most 
brilliant work, in his thorough computations of 
stellar paths and masses. We should also not for- 
get Chandler's determination of magnitudes, 
Young's work on the sun, Newton's on meteorites, 
and Barnard's on comets."t Important ad- 
vances have been • made in both scientific and 

* p. 440. ip. 443. 



Science 453 

applied physics. "Applied physics has yielded the 
modern bicycle, the sewing machine, the printing 
press, tool-making machinery, and a thousand 
other substitutes for muscular labour; has also per- 
fected the telegraph, the incandescent lamp, the 
telephone and the phonograph, and every day 
brings some new laurel to the American inven- 
tor." t Chemistry, geology, mineralogy, biology, 
zoology, and other sciences have many achieve- 
ments to their credit. ''Of course, the actual 
achievements are very uneven; they are, m some 
directions, superior to those of England and 
France — in a few directions even to those of Ger- 
many, but in others far inferior to German attain- 
ments."* 

Concerning the science of history, Miinsterberg 
observes that '^America has had a systematic 
history only since the thirties, and two periods of 
work are generally distinguished; an earlier one, 
in which historians undertook to cover the whole 
subject of American history, or at least very large 
portions of it, and a later period embracing the 
last decade, in which historical interest has been 
devoted to minuter studies. Bancroft and Park- 
man stand for the first movement. George Ban- 
croft began to write his history in 1830, and 
worked patiently thereon for half a century. By 
1S83 the development of the country, from its dis- 
covery up to the adoption of the American Con- 
stitution, had been completed in a thorough-going 
fashion. Parkman was the greater genius, and 

* P 447. t p. 443. 



454 Democracy in America 

one who opened an entirely new perspective in 
American history by his investigations and fascin- 
ating descriptions of the wars between the English 
and the French colonists. The greater works of 
Hildreth and Tucker should also be mentioned 
here. 

'The period of specialized work, of course, 
covers less ground. The large monographs of 
Henry Adams, John Fiske, Rhodes, Schouler, Mc- 
Master, Eggleston, Roosevelt, and of Von Hoist, if 
an adoptive son of America may be included, are 
accounted the best pieces of work. They have de- 
scribed American history partly by geographical 
regions and partly by periods; and they show 
great diversity of style, as may be seen by com- 
paring the martial tone of Hoist and the majestic 
calmness of Rhodes. To these must be added the 
biographies, of which the best known form the 
series of 'American Statesmen'. Americans are 
particularly fond of studying a portion of national 
history from the life of some especially active per- 
sonality. Then too, for twenty years, there has 
been a considerable and indispensable fabrication 
of historical research. Large general works and 
reference books, like those of Winsor, Hart, and 
others; the biographies, archive studies, corre- 
spondences, local histories, often published by 
learned societies; series of monographs, journals, 
the chief of which is the American Historical Re- 
vietv — in short, everything necessary to the culti- 
vation of historical science are to be found abun- 
dantly. The Revolution, the beginnings of the 



Science 455 

Federation, the Civil War, and Congress are spe- 
cially favored topics. It is almost a matter of 
course that the independent investigation into 
European history is very little attempted : although 
very good things have been done, such as Pres- 
cott's work on Spanish history, Motley's Rise of 
the Dutch Republic; and in recent times, for 
instance, Taylor has made important studies in 
English history, Perkins in French, Henderson in 
German, Thayer in Italian, Lea and Emerton m 
ecclesiastical history, Mahan in the history of naval 
warfare, and similarly others."* 

De Tocqueville was of the opinion that his- 
tory in a democracy, as contrasted with that of an 
aristocracy, has a natural tendency towards broad 
generalizations, and a universal outlook. ''Histori- 
ans who write in aristocratic ages," he says, "are 
wont to refer all occurrences to the particular will 
or temper of certain individuals; and they are apt 
to attribute the most important revolutions to very 
slight accidents. They trace out the smallest 
causes with sagacity, and frequently leave the 
greatest unperceived. Historians who live in dem- 
ocratic ages exhibit precisely opposite character- 
istics. Most of them attribute hardly any influence 
to the individual over the destiny of the race, nor 
to citizens over the fate of a people; but, on the 
other hand, they assign great general causes to all 
petty incidents. The contrary tendencies explain 
each other. 

* p. 438. 



456 Democracy in America 

''When the historian of aristocratic ages sur- 
veys the theatre of the world, he at once perceives 
a very small number of prominent actors, who 
manage the whole piece. These great personages, 
who occupy the front of the stage, arrest the ob- 
servation, and fix it on themselves; and whilst the 
historian is bent on penetrating the secret motives 
which make them speak and act, the rest escape 
his memory. The importance of the things which 
some men are seen to do, gives him an exaggerated 
estimate of the influence which one man may pos- 
sess: and naturally leads him to think, that in 
order to explain the impulse of the multitude, it is 
necessary to refer them to the particular influence 
of some one individual. 

''When on the contrary, all the citizens are 
independent of one another, and each of them is 
individually weak, no one is seen to exert a great, 
or still less a lasting power, over the community. 
At first sight, individuals appear to be absolutely 
devoid of any influence over it; and society would 
seem to advance alone by the free and voluntary 
concurrence of all the men who compose it. This 
naturally prompts the mind to search for that gen- 
eral reason which operates upon so many men's 
faculties at the same time, and turns them simul- 
taneously in the same direction.! * * * 

"Those who write in democratic ages have 
another more dangerous tendency. When the 
traces of individual action upon nations are lost, it 
often happens that the world goes on to move, 

ill, 91. 



Science 457 

though the moving agent is no longer discoverable. 
As it becomes extremely difficult to discern and 
to analyze the reasons which, acting separately on 
the volition of each member of the community, 
concur in the end to produce movement in the 
v^hole mass, men are led to believe that this move- 
ment is involuntary, and that societies uncon- 
sciously obey some superior force ruling over them. 
But even v^hen the general fact v^hich governs the 
private volition of all individuals is supposed to be 
discovered upon the earth, the principle of human 
free-v^ill is not secure. A cause sufficiently exten- 
sive to affect millions of men at once, and suffi- 
ciently strong to bend them all together in the 
same direction, may well seem irresistible; having 
seen that mankind do yield to it, the mind is close 
upon the inference that mankind cannot resist it. 
''Historians who live in democratic ages, then, 
not only deny that the few have any power of 
acting upon the destiny of a people, but they de- 
prive the people themselves of the power of modi- 
fying their own condition, and they subject them 
either to an inflexible Providence, or to some blind 
necessity. According to them, each nation is indis- 
solubly bound by its position, its origin, its preced- 
ents, and its character, to a certain lot which no 
efforts can ever change. They involve generation 
in generation, and thus, going back from age to 
age, and from necessity to necessity, up to the 
origin of the world, they forge a close and enor- 
mous chain, which girds and binds the human race. 
To their minds it is not enough to show what 



458 Democracy in America 

events have occurred; they would fain show that 
events could not have occurred otherwise. They 
take a nation arrived at a certain stage of its his- 
tory, and they affirm that it could not but follow 
the track which brought it thither. It is easier to 
make such an assertion than to show by what 
means the nation might have adopted a better 
course."* 

These tendencies to generalize and find a great 
and irresistible force underlying the stream of 
events are certainly very characteristic of French 
historians, and especially conspicuous in the writ- 
ings of Comte, Guizot, Taine, Tarde and Le Bon. 
In a new country like that of America it was very 
natural that the development of history should 
have its period of romance, in which emphasis 
should be placed upon particular events and strik- 
ing personalities, but it is very evident to one 
familiar with American historical literature that 
the tendency to interpret from the standpoint of 
universal causes has been very marked in Amer- 
ican historians, especially in those of the last two 
decades, in spite of the failure of Miinsterberg to 
observe the fact. Up to the middle of the eight- 
eenth century, American history attributed the 
development of everything to one great cause — 
Providence; from that date until the last quarter 
of the nineteenth century it lapsed into roman- 
ticism, emphasizing particular events and conspic- 
uous personalities; and thence to the present time 
it has shown a strong tendency to minimize all 

* II, 93. 



Science 459 

particulars and to discover underlying general 
causes. For instance, recent writers seem to attri- 
bute the evolution of American civilization to the, 
stream of democratic influences originating in the 
back-country and the frontier. There can be no 
doubt that the natural tendency of American his- 
torians has been, as De Tocqueville points out, 
towards a grasp of those fundamental causes which 
lie behind all progress. And America would have 
much more to her credit in this higher type of 
history had her historians not been led astray by a 
slavish desire to imitate the German craze for iso- 
lated and minute^ researches, which lose sight of 
the general under the crushing weight of partic- 
ulars. It was this partial and disjointed view of 
history which kept the German people blind to 
that universal drift of civilization which over- 
whelmed the German Empire in the recent war. 
And to the same cause may be assigned the reason 
why no history of the United States has yet ap- 
peared w^hich synthesizes American evolution with 
that of the Old World.. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 
EDUCATION. 

SYDNEY SMITH COMMENDED AI^IERICA'S WISE PRO- 
VISION FOR EDUCATION— DE TOCQUEVILLE OB- 
SERVED FEW MEN OF EMINENT LEARNING, BUT A 
HIGH DEGREE OF ENLIGHTENMENT AMONG THE 
MASSES— DICKENS, LAWSON AND OTHERS NOTE 
MERITORIOUS FEATURES OF AMERICAN SCHOOLS- 
DEMOCRATIC SPIRIT AMONG STUDENTS— EDUCA- 
TION OF THE PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF THE SCHOOLS- 
AMERICAN SYSTEM OF EDUCATION— ADAPTATION 
OF THE SCHOOL TO THE INDIVIDUAL. 

Among the earliest commentators upon educa- 
tion in the United States was Sydney Smith. "Too 
much praise/' he says, "cannot be given to the 
Americans for their great attention to the subject 
of education. All the public lands are surveyed 
according to the direction of Congress. They are 
divided into townships of six square miles, by lines 
running with the cardinal points, and consequently 
crossing each other at right angles. Every town- 
ship is divided into thirty-six sections, each a mile 
square, and containing 640 acres. One section in 
each township is reserved, and given in perpetuity 
for the benefit of common schools. * * * These 
facts are very properly quoted by Mr. Hodgson; 
and it is impossible to speak too highly of their 
value and importance. They quite put into the 

[460] 



Education 461 

background everything which has been done in 
the Old World for the improvement of the lower 
orders, and confer deservedly upon the Americans 
the character of a wise, a reflecting, and a vir- 
tuous people." (Essay on America.) 

De Tocqueville observed that there were very 
few men of eminent learning in America, but that 
the masses were more enlightened than any other 
people in the world. *'The observer," he says, 
"who is desirous of forming . an opinion on the 
state of instruction amongst the Anglo-Americans 
must . consider the same subject from two different 
points of view. If he only singles out the learned, 
he will be astonished to find how rare they are ; 
but if he counts the ignorant, the American people 
will appear to be the most enlightened community 
in the world. The whole population, as I observed 
in another place, is situated between these two 
extremes. In New England, every citizen receives 
the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is 
moreover taught the doctrines and the evidences 
of his religion, the history of his country, and the 
leading features of its Constitution. In the States 
of Connecticut and Massachusetts it is extremely 
rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with 
these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them 
is a sort of phenomenon. * * * 

''What I have said of New England must not, 
however, be applied indistinctly to the whole 
Union; as we advance towards the West or the 
South, the instruction of the people diminishes. In 



462 Democracy in America 

the States which are adjacent to the Gulf of Mex- 
ico, a certain number of individuals may be found, 
as in our own country, who are devoid of the rudi- 
ments of instruction."* 

The high degree of enlightenment of the peo- 
ple, De Tocquevillo thought, was derived from 
experiences rather than from books. Says he : "As 
soon as the pioneer arrives at the spot which is to 
serve him as a retreat, he fells a few trees and 
builds a loghouse. Nothing can offer a more mis- 
erable aspect than these isolated dwellings. The 
traveller who approaches one of them towards 
nightfall sees the flicker of the hearth-flame 
through the chinks in the walls; and at night, if 
the wind rises, he hears the roof of boughs shake 
to and fro in the midst of the great forest trees. 
Who would not suppose that this poor hut is the 
asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort of 
comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and 
the dwelling which shelters him. Everything about 
him is primitive and unformed, but he is himself 
the result of the labor and the experience of 
eighteen centuries. He wears the dresS; and 
speaks the language of the cities; he is acquainted 
with the past, curious of the future, and ready for 
argument upon the present; he is, in short, a 
highly civilized being, who consents, for a time, to 
inhabit the backwoods, and who penetrates into 
the wilds of the New World with the Bible, an axe, 
and a file of newspapers. 

*I. 321. 



Education 463 

''It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapid- 
ity with which public opinion circulates in the 
midst of these deserts. I do not think that so 
much intellectual intercourse takes place in the 
most enlightened and populous districts of France. 
It cannot be doubted that, in the United States, the 
instruction of the people powerfully contributes to 
the support of a democratic republic; and such 
must always be the case, I believe, where instruc- 
tion which awakens the understanding is not sep- 
arated from the moral education which amends 
the heart. But I by no means exaggerate the 
benefit, and I am still further from thinking, as so 
many people do in Europe, that men can be in- 
stantaneously made citizens by teaching them to 
read and write. True information is derived from 
experience; and if the Americans had not been 
gradually accustomed to govern themselves, their 
book-learning would not assist them much at the 
present day. 

*'I have lived a great deal with the people of 
the United States, and I cannot express how much 
I admire their experience and good sense. An 
American should never be allowed to speak of 
Europe; for he will then display a vast deal of pre- 
sumption and very foolish pride. He will take 
up with those crude and vague notions which are 
so useful to the ignorant all over the world. But 
if you question him respecting his own country, 
the cloud which dimmed his intelligence will imme- 
diately disperse; his language will become as clear 
and as precise as his thoughts. He will inform 



464 Democracy in America 

you what his rights are, and by what means he 
exercises them ; he will be able to point out the cus- 
toms which obtain in the political world. You will 
find that he is well acquainted with the rules of 
the administration, and that he is familiar with the 
mechanism of the laws. The citizen of the United 
States does not acquire his practical science and 
his positive notions from books, the instruction he 
has acquired may have prepared him for receiving 
those ideas, but it did not furnish them. The 
American learns to know the laws by participat- 
ing in the act of legislation, and he takes a lesson 
in the forms of government from governing. The 
great work of society is ever going on beneath his 
eyes, and, as it were, under his hands."* 

Dickens was very favorably impressed with 
Harvard University. **There is no doubt," he 
says, ''that much of the intellectual refinement and 
superiority of Boston is referable to the quiet in- 
fluence of the University of Cambridge, which is 
within three or four miles of the city. The resi- 
dent professors at that university are gentlemen 
of learning and varied attainments: and are, with- 
out one exception that I can call to mind, men who 
would shed a grace upon, and do honor to any so- 
ciety in the civilized world. Many of the resident 
gentry in Bostofi and its neighborhood, and I 
think I am not mistaken in adding, a large major- 
ity of those who are attached to the liberal profes- 
sions there, have been educated at this same school. 
Whatever the defects of American universities may 

* I, 324. 



Education 465 

be, they disseminate no prejudices; rear no bigots; 
dig up the buried ashes of no old superstitions; 
never interpose between the people and their im- 
provements; exclude no man because of his reli- 
gious opinions; above all, in the whole course of 
study and instruction, recognize a world, and a 
broad one too, lying beyond the college walls."* 
In a general survey of the educational system 
of the United States, Miinsterberg notes that '*the 
federal government, as such, has no direct influence 
on education. The tirelessly active Bureau of 
education at Washington, * * * jg essentially a 
bureau for advice and information and for the tak- 
ing of statistics. The legal ordinances pertaining 
to school systems is a matter for the individual 
state, and the state again leaves it to the individ- 
ual community, within certain limits of course and 
under state supervision, to build schools and to 
organize them, to choose their teachers, their 
plans of education, and their school-books." * * 
*'The responsibility for the moral and intel- 
lectual standards, for the practical conditions, and 
for the financial liabilities incurred by every school, 
rests therefore immediately with the community, 
which is to pay for their support, and whose chil- 
dren are to derive advantage. And nevertheless, 
the general oversight of the state sees to it that 
neither whimsicality nor carelessness abuses this 
right, nor departs too widely from approved tra- 
ditions. These authorities are further supplement- 



* American Notes. 



466 Democracy in America 

ed in that the state legislature is more or less able 
to make up for differences between rich and poor 
districts and between the city and the country, 
besides directly carrying on certain normal schools 
in which the teachers for the elementary and gram- 
mar schools are trained."* 

Besides a State university maintained by each 
State, there are several universities maintained by 
cities, a great many maintained by religious de- 
nominations, and several privately endowed uni- 
versities like Harvard, Yale, Chicago and Leland 
Stanford. And to these must be added a consid- 
erable number of technical schools, some of which 
are maintained by the States and some by private 
enterprise. 

Foreign observers generally note the intimate 
connection between our universities and the out- 
side world. "A member of the British Commis- 
sion," says Van Dyke, "which came to study edu- 
cation in the United States four years ago, (in 
1906) gave his judgment that the University of 
Wisconsin was the foremost in America. Why? 
'Because,' said he, *it is a wholesome product of 
a commonwealth of three millions of people; sane, 
industrial, and progressive. It knits together the 
professions and labours; it makes the fine arts and 
the anvil one.' " f "In no country of the 
world," says Miinsterberg, "is the nation so much 
and so systematically instructed outside of the 
school as in America, and the thousand forms in 
which popular education is provided for those who 

•p. 371. ip. 226. 



Education 467 

have grown beyond the schools, are once more a 
lively testimony to the tireless instinct for personal 
perfection. Evening schools, summer schools, uni- 
versity extension courses, lecture institutes, society 
classes, and debating clubs, all work together to 
that end; and to omit these would be to give no 
true history of American culture."* 

Lawson, in speaking of our technical schools, 
takes the view that ''The educators of the people 
are indirect wealth-producers in so far as they 
give a practical money-making turn to their in- 
struction. Formerly this was rather an occasion 
for sneering at American ediication, but it is now 
better understood. In an industrial age the best 
education is the one that best fits us for practical 
duty. In this respect American schools of all 
grades, are rendering valuable service to the com- 
munity. Were we asked wherein the Americans 
appear to be furthest ahead of their Euro- 
pean competitors, we could unhesitatingly answer, 
in technical education. It is not merely that Amer- 
ican technical schools are better in themselves, 
more liberally endowed, better equipped, are more 
productive of technical skill, but that they keep 
in closer touch with the industries for which they 
serve as nurseries. Most of them are associated 
with local industries, and many are directly con- 
nected with mills, factories, or mines into which 
the students pass as soon as they are qualified. 
In English schools of the same class comparatively 
few students qualify for actual work, and they may 

* p. 362. 



468 Democracy in America 

not be able to find work when they qualify. It is 
all a happy-go-lucky business which may end any- 
how or nohow."* 

The local responsibilities imposed by the edu- 
cational system of the United States, as well as 
the great number and diversity of schools, tend 
to cultivate a wide interest in education among the 
people of all classes. "The European," says Muns- 
terberg, "who is accustomed to see the question 
of education left to the government can hardly 
realize with what intensity this entire population 
participates in the solution of theoretical problems 
and in the overcoming of practical difficulties. No 
weekly paper or magazine, and no lecture pro- 
gramme of any association of thinking men, could 
be found in which questions of nurture and edu- 
cation are not treated. Pedagogical publications 
are innumerable, and the number of those who 
are technically informed is nearly identical with 
the number of those who have brought up chil- 
dren. The discussions in Germany over, we may 
say, high schools and technical schools, over mod- 
ern and ancient languages, or the higher educa- 
tion of women, interest a relatively small circle as 
compared with similar discussions in America. 
The mere fact that this effort toward the best 
school instruction has so deeply taken hold of all 
classes of society, and that it leads all parties and 
sects and all parts of the country to a united and 
self-conscious struggle forward, is in itself of the 

•p. 27. 



Education 469 

highest value for the education of the whole peo- 
ple."* 

The curriculum of American schools has a 
plasticity which aims to adapt the instruction to 
the individual, instead of adapting the individual 
to the instruction. Says Miinsterberg: "The schools 
have a growing tendency to establish various par- 
allel courses, between which the scholars are al- 
lowed to choose. In the simplest case there is, 
perhaps, on the one hand a very practical plan of 
education, and a second course which is rather 
more liberal; or again, there may be a course for 
those who are not meaning to study further, and 
another course for those who are preparing for the 
entrance examinations to some higher school. The 
fiction of uniformity is preserved in this way. The 
child does not, as in Germany, choose between dif- 
ferent schools, but he chooses between plans of 
education in the same school, and every day the 
tendency deepens to make this elective system more 
and more labile. 

"But the most modern pedagogues are not 
content even with this, and insist, especially in the 
grade of high school, that the make-up of the 
course of study must be more and more, as they 
say, adapted to the individuality of the scholars: 
or, as others think, to the whimsies of the parents 
and the scholars. Since, in accordance with this, 
the entrance examinations for the colles-es leave 
considerable play for the choice of specialties, this 

♦p. 362. 



470 Democracy in America 

movement will probably go on developing for some 
time."* 

The American idea of education is well illus- 
trated in a recent novel, "His Family," by Eii).est 
Pool, dealing with life in New York, wherein a 
teacher of slum children, finding that a little boy, 
with a poor school record, was devoted to dogs 
and white mice, proposed to add to the public 
schools a complete zoological collection. 

The most important contrast between educa- 
tion in America and in Europe, generally overlook- 
ed by all foreign critics, is that education in Amer- 
ica is free for all pupils up to and including the 
university. In European countries free education 
extends only to the primary schools, beyond which 
the pupil cannot go unless he is able to pay for his 
tuition. This discrimination against impecunious 
students has a tendency to perpetrate the system 
of caste by preventing them from rising into the 
professional classes. In American State universi- 
ties generally, the special schools of law, medicine, 
pharmacy, and engineering are free to all pupils, 
except that small fees are charged to cover ac- 
tual material used in laboratories. 

Alexander Francis thought that the frater- 
nities, so common in American universities, tended 
to develop an undemocratic spirit. He says: "The 
disabilities under which non-fraternity students 
lie are serious; and about one-third of the students 
are outside their college fraternities. All of these 
are socially unaffiliated with the college; and they 

* p. 372. 



Education 471 

lack all the facilities, social and intellectual, that 
come from fraternal life.f * ^^ * 

The greatest need of American universities, 
he adds, ''is purer and better democracy in which 
there shall be neither need nor place for the pres- 
ent social organizations and combinations which 
produce the class distinctions based chiefly on 
wealth which are rising in all parts of the coun- 
try/'* 

But in spite of the influence of the fraterni- 
ties, the college life of America is very largely 
pervaded with a democratic spirit. Paul Bourget 
speaks of this spirit as follows: ''Equality and ac- 
tivity, especially equality, are the essential charac- 
teristics which emerge, on a first glance, over the 
sort of life which these young people lead during 
these four years. If the English proposed to send 
sons of the nobility to Oxford, in order to create 
the complex type of the 'gentleman,' the Ameri- 
cans appear on their part, to have proposed to 
bring together poor boys and rich boys in order 
to abolish, or even forestall, that prejudice against 
paid work, which is, in fact, the principle most 
destructive of democracy."** 

Concerning students in American universities, 
De Constant says: "They are allowed to choose be- 
tween two entirely different styles of living. Some 
of them, divided into groups of twenty or twenty- 
five, live in small villas, where they are their own 
masters, under the management of one of their 
number, whom they elect president, in virtue of 

- p. 195. * p. 197. ** p. 29.1. 



472 Democracy in America 

his ability and merit. They study, play outdoor, 
games, practice athletic sports, and sleep in the 
open air in all w^eathers. In the evening they 
meet in the parlor — of course with draughts still 
playing all around them — and devote themselves to 
music and various amusements. Others lead ex- 
actly the same life in a larger building, where they 
number several hundred, but are just as free as 
the others. 

"It is the same with the girls. Groups of 
them have their houses and gardens, or their in- 
dependent dormitory. The houses occupied by 
the girls and youths are close together and inter- 
mingled, and there is never a breath of scandal. 
The girls go about freely all day, and even at 
night, in the gardens and streets and on the play- 
grounds. They play games, ride (always astride) 
and gallop about bareheaded, just as they go on 
foot. They are not afraid of anything — neither 
the air, not the cold, nor the heat, nor of any one 
looking at them."* 

Speaking of a dinner at one of the houses, he 
says: '*In addition to the two Japanese students 
who waited on this gathering of youth and grace, 
there was, strange to say, a tall young man, very 
quiet and simple — an American — -v^ho was also 
serving. He was a student, working as a servant, 
in accordance with a custom which prevails all 
over the United States among young men whose 
means do not enable them to pay the expenses of 
their college course. It was done so simply and 

♦p. 56. 



Education 473 

naturally that no one but a brute could have made 
facetious remark about it in such a company, or 
asked how such paradoxes were possible. From 
time to time during the meal the girls stopped talk- 
ing in obedience to an imperceptible sign from one 
of them, and without standing up, began to sing a 
part-song. It was neither lively, sentimental, or 
witty, but the lively element predominated. When 
they stopped, the talk and laughter began again, 
and presently came another song. The dinner 
seemed a very short one to me. 

"After that I went to see the young men, to 
the number of several hundred, and made them a 
speech, amid frightful draughts. It was a pleas- 
ure to see their fresh and open countenances. All 
these young people have no thought of evil; but 
it will be all the more easy to deceive them and 
lead them astray, and how necessary it is to put 
them on their guard, not only against their own 
mistakes, but against those committed by govern- 
ments. I have often expressed such fears on leav- 
ing these young men and girls, abandoned, so to 
speak, as they were, to their own instincts. Final- 
ly, however, I began to wonder whether this kind 
of education is not the best of safeguard, and 
whether the use of liberty is not the best form of 
precaution and discipline." f * * * 

''Youths and girls are humanized by semi- 
fraternal intercourse and are thus prepared to 
know each other better in later life. Freedom for 
the girl obliges her to exercise more self-restraint, 

t p. 57. 



474 Democracy in America 

and also accustoms a young man to a greater re- 
spect for her and for himself. Young people 
should not be isolated and made shy. The young 
American men whom I saw among the girls in the 
West struck me as purer and more attractive than 
anywhere else, and also as morally stronger, inas- 
much as they undertake the most difficult part of 
education, that of their own self-will. They are 
accustomed to fight the first battle with themselves 
— ^the battle that decides all the others. They 
have to choose between debauchery, which is im- 
possible in these surroundings, and chastity. Go- 
education of the sexes is a school of uprightness 
and energy. It makes young men more sociable, 
less awkward and better fitted to make their way 
In life.f * * * 

"The Americans realize that the mere instruc- 
tion of the young is not enough, and for this reason 
they have been reproached for sacrificing instruc- 
tion too much. Young people must be brought up 
and protected against themselves when they en- 
ter upon life and against the appeals of the outside 
world. An eminent French educationalist, who 
went over Columbia University with me, observed : 
*What a number of precautions they take to keep 
their students in the university. Look at those 
two immense swimming baths, one for the girls 
and the other for the boys, where they can train 
into champions. Look at the gymnasium and play- 
grounds — not quite large enough here but im- 
mense at other universities — and look outside, in 

ip. 330. 



Education 475 

the streets. There are no bars, no drinking places 
and no temptations/ He was right, and I could 
not help drawing a comparison between these 
motherly precautions, not only encouraged but in- 
sisted upon by American public spirit, with the 
manner in which our students, at the Sorbonne, 
for instance, are left entirely to their own de- 
vices. Nothing but study in all its beauty, and 
also its austerity, is there to keep them indoors. 
They have no park, not a single tree or playground, 
or place for rest; but outside, at the very door, 
is the Boulevard St. Michel with light love con- 
stantly making claims upon their attention and in- 
flicting the temptation of St. Anthony upon them.* 

* p. 333. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 
PHILOSOPHY. 

LATE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA— BUT 
THE PEOPLE EMPLOY A PHILOSOPHY UNCONSCIOUS- 
LY—AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY ROOTED IN PIONEER 
CONDITIONS — ITS CHARACTERISTICS — WILLIAM 
JAMES ITS REPRESENTATIVE— HIS UNDERSTANDING 
OF PRAGMATISM— ATHLETIC MORALITY AND IDEAL 
ISM— JOSIAH ROYCE'S INTERPRETATION OF THE 
PROBLEM OF EVIL. 

Philosophy as a branch of knowledge scarce- 
ly had any development in the United States until 
the latter half of the nineteenth century. The de- 
velopment of our culture has gone on largely with- 
out any conscious employment of a philosophy. 
In so far as our people have thought of philosophy, 
they have regarded it as something cloistered, spec- 
tral and of no practical value. Except among stu- 
dents of the subject, I believe that the masses in 
all countries look upon philosophy as belonging to 
the realm of mysticism, to things ethereal, ab- 
stract, incomprehensible, and therefore entirely 
removed from the domain of practical life. 

Perhaps there is much in the subject-matter 
of philosophic literature to justify this popular 
point of view. But in fact, philosophy is an in- 
tensely practical branch of knowledge. No man 
can live without a philosophy, however unconscious 

[476] 



Philosophy 477 

of the fact he may be. The ordinary man very 
easily comprehends the practicability of science, 
because its laws and processes are visible in every- 
thing that he undertakes. But he is not so con- 
scious of the fact that in whatever he undertakes 
he is a philosopher, and necessarily makes use of 
philosophic principles. Science and philosophy are 
indispensable complements of each other. The one 
tells man how he may live, the other why he lives. 
The one tells him how he may terminate life, the 
other tells him whether or not he should termi- 
nate it. Every man who lives must have a motive 
for so doing. He must have arrived at the conclu- 
sion that there is something worth living for. Phi- 
losophy is the study of why we live, and of the 
rational meaning of everything that we undertake. 

With this hint at the scope of philosophy, it 
is evident that the Americans have been philoso- 
phers from the beginning, and that their civilization 
has been the outcome of their philosophy. Let us 
now inquire what has been and what is the phi- 
losophy of the American people. 

"I think," says De Tocqueville, "that in no 
country in the civilized world is less attention paid 
to philosophy than in the United States. The 
Americans have no philosophical school of their 
own; and they care but little for all the schools in- 
to which Europe is divided, the very names of 
which are scarcely known to them. Nevertheless 
it is easy to perceive that almost all the inhabitants 
of the United States conduct their understanding 
in the same manner, and govern it by the same 



478 Democracy in America 

rules; that is to say, that without ever having tak- 
en the trouble to define the rules of a philosophi- 
cal method, they are in possession of one, common 
to the whole people. To evade the bondage of 
system and habit, of family maxims, class opinions, 
and, in some degree, of national prejudices; to ac- 
cept tradition only as a means of information, and 
existing facts only as a lesson used in doing other- 
wise, and doing better: to seek the reason of things 
for one's self, and in one's self alone; to tend to 
results without being bound by the means, and to 
aim at the substance through the form ; — such are 
the principal characteristics of what I shall call 
the philosophical method of the Americans. But 
if I go further, and if I seek amongst these char- 
acteristics that which predominates over and in- 
cludes almost all the rest. I discover that in most 
of the operations of the mind, each American ap- 
peals to the individual exercise of his own under- 
standing alone. America is therefore one of the 
countries in the world where philosophy is least 
studied, and where the precepts of Descartes are 
best applied. Nor is this surprising. The Ameri- 
cans do not read the works of Descartes, because 
their social condition deters them from speculative 
studies; but they follow his maxims because this 
very social condition naturally disposes their un- 
derstanding to adopt them."* 

•'The Americans then have not required to ex- 
tract their philosophical methods from books; they 
have found it in themselves. The same thing may 

* II. 4. 



Philosophy 479 

be remarked in what hast taken place in Europe. 
This same method has only been established and 
made popular in Europe in proportion as the con- 
dition of society has become more equal, and men 
have grown more like each other. Let us consid- 
er for a moment the connection of the periods in 
which this change may be traced. In the sixteenth 
century the Reformers subjected some of the dog- 
mas of the ancient faith to the scrutiny of private 
judgment; but they still withheld from it the dis- 
cussion of all the rest. In the Seventeenth century, 
Bacon in the natural sciences, and Descartes in 
the study of philosophy in the strict sense of the 
term, abolished recognized formulas, destroyed the 
empire of tradition, and overthrew the authority 
of the schools. The philosophers of the eight- 
eenth century, generalizing at length the same prin- 
ciple, undertook to submit to the private judgment 
of each man all the subjects of his belief. 

''Who does not perceive that Luther, Descartes 
and Voltaire employed the same method, and that 
they differed only in the greater or less use which 
they professed should be made of it? Why did 
the Reformers confine themselves so closely within 
the circle of religious ideas? Why did Descartes, 
choosing only to apply his method to certain mat- 
ters, though he made it fit to be applied to all, de- 
clare that men might judge for themselves in mat- 
ters philosophical but not in matters political? 
How happened it that in the eighteenth century 
those general applications were all at once drawn 
from this same method, which Descartes and his 



480 Democracy in America 

predecessors had either not perceived or had re- 
jected? To what, lastly, is the fact to be attribu- 
ted that at this period the method we are speaking 
of suddenly emerged from the schools, to penetrate 
into society and to become the common standard 
of intelligence; and that, after it had become pop- 
ular among the French, it has been ostensibly 
adopted or secretly followed by all the nations of 
Europe."* 

The reason this principle of private judgment 
or self-determination was not applied in America 
to philosophy until recent times was the very 
strong religious influence, restraining individual 
analysis within narrow limits, and the absence of 
revolutions to upset existing beliefs and throw men 
back on individual speculation. As soon, however, 
as freedom of thought in America won its way into 
the field of philosophy, our view of that subject 
at once began to manifest the characteristics pe- 
culiar to the American people. 

In a pioneer country every man is obliged to 
rely upon his personal resources, upon his person- 
al experience and judgment. Hence he acquires 
an extraordinary degree of self-reliance, and a 
disposition to judge everything upon the basis of 
his experience. De Tocqueville observed that the 
philosophy of the Americans, before they had any 
consciousness of a philosophy, was, *'to seek the 
reason of things for one's self, and in one's self 
alone, to attend to results without being bound by 
the means," etc. Hugo Munsterberg expressed the 

* II, 5 



Philosophy 481 

same idea when he said of the present-day Ameri- 
can that his chief characteristic was "self-deter- 
mination." 

It is rather interesting to discover, that the 
characteristic now most generally ascribed to 
American philosophy is the same as that of the 
pioneer who blazed his way through our forest. 
It is the insistence that everything must depend 
for its truth upon its consequences as verified by 
personal experience. It is the application of self- 
determination to philosophy. 

A philosophy to be distinctly American must 
be very practical and strenuous, emphasizing ac- 
tion, and appealing to results as a test of its sound- 
ness. It must have the aggressiveness and efficien- 
cy characteristic of the athlete in order to harmon- 
ize with our highly competitive industrial life. 

Fortunately America has produced a philo- 
sophy which represents and interprets the above 
named individual characteristic; and the great 
champion of this philosophy is William James. It 
is differentiated from other philosophies by the 
name of pragmatism, which means the testing of 
any thesis by its consequences. In contrast to the 
intellectualistic pursuit of truth for its own sake, 
pragmatic philosophy insists that the object of 
truth or thinking is to direct action. 

"The structual unity of the nervous system," 
says James, "is a triad, neither of whose elements 
has any independent existence. The sensory im- 
pression exists only for the sake of awakening the 
central process of reflection, and the central pro- 



482 Democracy in America 

cess of reflection only for the sake of calling forth 
the final act. All action is thus re-action upon the 
outer world and the middle stage of consideration 
or conternplation or thinking is only a place of 
transit, the bottoni of the loop, both of whose ends 
have their point of application in the outer world. 
If it should ever have no roots in the outer world, 
if it should ever happen that it led to no active 
measures, it would fail of its essential function, 
and would have to be considered either pathologi- 
cal or abortive. The current of life which runs in 
at our eyes or ears is meant to run out at our hands, 
feet or lips. The only use of the thoughts it oc- 
casions while inside is to determine its direction 
to whichever of these organs shall, on the whole, 
under the circumstances actually present, act in the 
way most propitious to our welfare."* 

James believed that truth was not only good 
but good for something. He wished to bring it 
down from the skies, and make it the guide to 
daily life. He cared nothing for so-called abstract 
truth. To the adherent of such he seemed to say, 
**Get busy, play the game, and let me see what 
your supposed truth can do." 

Commenting upon the new turn which James 
gave to philosophy, his colleague and disciple, 
Josiah Royce, says: "I am sure that James himself 
was very little conscious that he was indeed an 
especially representative philosopher. He certain- 
ly had no ambition to vaunt himself as such. He 



* The Will to Believe, 113-114. 



Philosophy 483 

worked with a beautiful and hearty sincerity upon 
the problems that as a fact interested him. He 
knew that he loved these problems because of 
their intense human interest. He knew, then, that 
he was indeed laboring in the service of mankind. 
But he so loved what he called the concrete, the 
particular, the individual, that he naturally made 
little attempt to define his office in terms of any 
social organism, or of any such object as our na- 
tional life, viewed as an entity. And he especially 
disliked to talk of causes in the abstract, or of 
social movements as I am here characterizing them. 
His world, seemed to be made up of individuals — 
men, events, experiences, and deeds."* 

Of the application of James' philosophy to 
ethics, Royce says: *1 may say at once that, in 
my opinion, he has just here proved himself to 
be most of all and in the best sense our national 
philosopher. For the philosopher must not be 
an echo. He must interpret. He must know us 
better than we know ourselves, and this is what 
indeed James has done for our American moral 
consciousness. For, first, while he made very little 
of the formal office of an ethical teacher and sel- 
dom wrote upon technical controversies, he was, 
as a fact, profoundly ethical in his whole influence. 
And next, he fully understood, yet shared in a 
rich measure, the motives to which the ethical 
maxims just summarized have given expression. 
Was not he himself restlessly active in his whole 
temperament? Did he not love individual enter- 

* William James and other Essays. 19. 



484 Democracy in America 

prise and its free expression? Did he not loathe 
what seemed to him abstraction? Did he not in- 
sist that the moralist must be in close touch with 
concrete life. As a psychologist did he not em- 
phasize the fact that the very essence of conscious 
life lies in its active, yes, in its creative relation to 
experience? Did he not counsel the strenuous at- 
titude towards our tasks? And are not all these 
features in harmony with the spirit from which 
the athletic type of morality just sketched seems 
to have sprung.'** 

The philosophy of James would, however, be 
subjected to very severe criticism if it did nothing 
more than interpret the American spirit, for the 
reason that those athletic and practical character- 
istics of our people, be they ever so useful, are not 
of a high order. They are the characteristics of a 
regime of competition, which however, conformable 
to athletic principles, are quite consistent with an 
efficiency that is narrow and selfish. They imply 
the desire to beat the other fellow and win the 
game. A higher motive than the desire to excel 
is the desire to conform to an ideal. Idealism, as 
contrasted to rivalry, implies the guidance of life 
by an exalted standard, and the subordinating of 
one's self to a cause whose consequences are for 
the good of humanity, and not for personal or 
class advantage. 

Happily for the American people and for the 
reputation of James, his philosophy did riot stop at 
interpreting the American spirit. He gave it a 



* William James and Other Essays. 



Philosophy 485 

new purchase and went beyond it. More than any 
other man of his time, he carried his philosophy 
into the realm of the ideal and invested it with a 
spiritual significance. The ethical maxims of James, 
says Royce, "are not the maxims of an impression- 
ist, of a romanticist, or of a partisan of merely 
worldly efficiency. They win their way through 
all such attitudes to something beyond — ^to a reso- 
lute interpretation of human life as an opportunity 
to cooperate with the superhuman and the divine. 
* * '^ As one of his latest works, 'The Plural- 
istic Universe,' still further showed, he himself was 
in spirit an ethical idealist to the core." * * * 
"He saw the facts of human life as they are, and 
he resolutely lived beyond them into the realm 
of the spirit. * * * 

"I ask you to remember him then, not only as 
the great psychologist, the radical empiricist, the 
pragmatist, but as the interpreter who has pointed 
the way beyond the trivialities which he so well 
understood and transcended towards that *Rule of 
Reason' which the prophetic maxim of our supreme 
court has just brought afresh to the attention of 
our people. That 'Rule of Reason,' when it comes, 
will not be a mere collection of abstractions. It 
will be, as James demanded, something concrete 
and practical. And it will indeed appeal to our 
faith as well as to our discursive logical processes. 
But it will express the transformed and enlight- 
ened American spirit as James already began to 



486 Democracy in America 

express it. Let him too be viewed as a prophet of 
the nation that is to be."* 

While pragmatism is only a method, it gives a 
decided tendency to philosophic thought. It points 
forv^ard, inspiring faith and effort, like the Ba- 
conian method applied to science. "There is noth- 
ing new," says James, *'in the pragmatic method. 
Socrates was an adept at it. Aristotle used it meth- 
odically. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume made mo- 
mentous contributions to truth by its means. Shad- 
worth Hodgson keeps insisting that realities are 
only what they are 'known as.' But these forerun- 
ners of pragmatism used it in fragments; they were 
a prelude only. Not until in our time has it gen- 
eralized itself, become conscious of a universal 
mission, pretended to a conquering destiny. I be- 
lieve in that destiny, and I hope I may end by in- 
spring you with my belief."t 

As illustrating the wholesome and optimistic 
trend of pragmatic philosophy in America, I will 
quote what Josiah Royce says by way of explaining 
the existence of evil in the world: 

'The value of suffering, the good that is at 
the heart of evil, lies in the spiritual triumphs that 
the endurance and the overcoming of evil can bring 
to those who learn the hard, the deep but glorious, 
lesson of life. And of all the spiritual triumphs 
that the presence of evil makes possible, the noblest 
is that which is won when a man is ready, not 
merely to bear the ills of fortune tranquilly if they 
come, as the Stoic moralists required their follow- 



* William Tames and Other Essays, 45. t Pragmatism, 50. 



Philosophy 487 

ers to do, but when one is willing to suffer vicari- 
ously, freely, devotedly, ills that he. might have 
avoided, but that the cause to which he is loyal, 
and the errors and sins that he himself did not com- 
mit, call upon him to suffer in order that the 
world may be brought nearer to its destined 
union with the divine. In brief, as the mystics 
themselves often have said, sorrow — wisely en- 
countered and freely borne — is one of the most 
precious privileges of the spiritual life. There is 
a certain lofty peace in triumphing over sorrow, 
which brings us to a consciousness of whatever is 
divine in life, in a way that mere joy, untroubled 
and unwon, can never make knowti to us. Perfect 
through suffering, — that is the universal, the ab- 
solutely necessary law of the higher spiritual life. 
It is a law that holds for God and for man, for 
those amongst men who have already become en- 
lightened through learning the true lessons of their 
own sorrows; and for those who, full of hope, still 
look forward to a life from which they in the main 
anticipate joy and worldly success, and who have 
yet to learn that the highest good of life is to come 
to them through whatever willing endurance of 
hardness they, as good soldiers of their chosen 
loyal service, shall learn to choose or to endure as 
their offering to their sacred cause. This doctrine 
that I now state to you is indeed no ascetic doc- 
trine. It does not for a moment imply that joy is 
a sin, or an evil symptom. What it does assert is 
that as long as the joys and successes which you 
seek are expected and sought by you simply as 



488 Democracy in America 

good fortune, which you try to win through mere 
cleverness — through mere technical skill in the arts 
of controlling fortune, — so long, I say, as this is 
your view of life, you know neither God's purpose 
nor the truth about man's destiny. Our always 
poor and defective skill in controlling fortune is 
indeed a valuable part of our reasonableness, since 
it is the natural basis upon which a higher spirit- 
ual life may be built. Hence the word, 'Young 
men, be strong,' and the common sense injunction, 
'Be skillful, be practical,' are good counsel. And 
so health, and physical prowess, and inner cheer- 
fulness, are indeed wisely viewed as natural foun- 
dations for a higher life. But the higher life itself 
begins only when your health and your strength 
and your skill and your good cheer appear to you 
merely as talents, few or many, which you propose 
to devote, to surrender, to the divine order, to what- 
ever ideal cause most inspires your loyalty, and 
gives sense and divine dignity to your life, — talents, 
I say, that you intend to return to your master with 
usury. And the work of the higher life consists, 
not in winning good fortune, but in transmuting all 
the transient values of fortune into eternal values. 
This you best do when you learn by experience how 
your worst fortune may be glorified, through wise 
resolve, and through the grace that comes from 
your conscious union with the divine, into some- 
thing far better than any good fortune could give 
to you ; namely, into a knowledge of how God 
himself endures evil, and triumphs over it, and 



Philosophy 489 

lifts it out of itself, and wins it over to the service 
of good. 

*'The true and highest values of the spiritual 
world consist, I say, in the triumph over suffering, 
over sorrow, and over unreasonableness; and the 
triumph over these things may appear in our hu- 
man lives in three forms: First, as mere personal 
fortitude, — as the stoical virtues in their simplest 
expression. The stoical virtues are the most ele- 
mentary stage of the higher spiritual life. Forti- 
tude is indeed required of every conscious agent 
who has control over himself at all. And fortitude, 
even in this simplest form as manly and strenuous 
endurance, teaches you eternal values that you can 
never learn unless you first meet with positive ills 
of fortune, and then force yourself to bear them 
in the loyal service of your cause. Willing endur- 
ance of suffering and grief is the price that you 
have to pay for conscious fidelity to any cause that 
is vast enough to be worthy of the loyalty of a life- 
time. And thus no moral agent can be made per- 
fect except through suffering borne in the service 
of his cause. Secondly, the triumph over suffering 
appears in the higher form of that conscious union 
with the divine plan which occurs when you learn 
that love, and loyalty, and the idealizing of life, 
and the most precious and sacred of all human 
relationships, are raised to their highest levels, are 
glorified, only when we not merely learn in our own 
personal case to suffer, to sorrow, to endure, and 
be spiritually strong, but when we learn to do these 
things together with our own brethren. For the 



490 Democracy in America 

comradeship of those who willingly practice forti- 
tude not merely as a private virtue, but as brethren 
in sorrow, is a deeper, a sweeter, a more blessed 
comradeship than ever is that of the lovers who 
have not yet been tried so as by fire. Then the 
deepest trials of life come to you and your friend 
together; and when, after the poor human heart 
has endured what for the time it is able to bear of 
anguish, it finds its little moment of rest, and when 
you are able once more to clasp the dear hand that 
would help if it could, and to look afresh into your 
friend's eyes and to see there the light of love as 
you could never see it before, — ^then, even in the 
darkness of this world, you catch some faint far- 
off glimpse of how the spirit may yet triumph de- 
spite all, and of why sorrow may reveal to us, as 
we sorrow and endure together, what we should 
never have known of life, and of love, and of each 
other, and of the high places of the spirit, if this 
cup had been permitted to pass from us. But 
thirdly, and best, the triumph of the spirit over 
suffering is revealed to us not merely when we en- 
dure, when we learn through sorrow to prize our 
brethren more, and when we learn to see new pow- 
ers in them and even in our poor selves, powers 
such as only sorrow could bring to light, — but 
when we also turn back from such experiences to 
real life again, remembering that sorrow's greatest 
lesson is the duty of offering ourselves more than 
ever to the practical service of some divine cause 
in this world. When one is stung to the heart and 
seemingly wholly overcome by the wounds of for- 



Philosophy 491 

tune, it sometimes chances that he learns after a 
while to arise from his agony, with the word: 
'Well, then, if, whether by my own fault or without 
it, I must descend into hell, I will remember that 
in this place of sorrow there are the other souls in 
torment, seeking light; I will help them to awake 
and arise. As I enter I will open the gates of hell 
that they may go forth.' Whatever happens to me, 
I say, this is a possible result of sorrow. I have 
known those men and women who could learn such 
a lesson from sorrow and who could practice it. 
These are the ones who, coming up through great 
tribulation, show us the highest glimpse that we 
have in this life of the triumph of the spirit over 
sorrow. But these are the ones who are willing 
to suffer vicariously, to give their lives as a ransom 
for many. These tell us what atonement means."* 



Essay, "A^'ha-t Is Vital in Christianity?" 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Administration, inferior in a democracy. 180. 

After-Dinner Speeches, American, 393. 

Agriculture, American, 57. 

Altruism of Americans, 23; an element of national efficiency, 254. 

Altruistic Class, in a democracy, 27, 261. 

Ambition, as related to democracy, 53, 302, 307. 

America, a paradise for married women, 107. 

American Architecture, 405. 

American Art, deficiencies of, not due to democracy, 419 ; con- 
trasted with the French, 422 ; hampered by haste, 425, by 
rapid social change, 419, by lack of common tradition, 424, 
good models, 422, and culture groups, 420. 

American Churches, functions of, 276 ; popularity of, 272 ; inde- 
pendent of the state, 292 ; as social centers, 285 ; architecture 
of, 408. 

American Federation, unique character of, 142 ; merits of the, 148. 

American History, development of, 453 ; tendencies of, 458 ; Ger- 
man influence on, 459. 

American Lawyers, 354. 

American Literature, comments on, 308, 316 ; not tardy in develop- 
ing, 327 ; influenced by women, 84 ; history of, 321. 

American Men, inferior culture of, 73 ; encourage extravagance in 
women, 98 ; respect of, for women, 104, 105. 

American Philosophy, reason for late development of, 480, 481 ; 
based on experience, 480 ; character of, 478 ; optimism of, 486. 

Americans, a new psychological type, 2 ; pugnacity of, 2 ; self- 
assertioil of, 4 ; bragging of, 4 ; self-reliance of, 14, 47 ; instinct 
of repulsion of, 15 ; wit and humor of, 15 ; conservatism of, 
22 ; altruism of, 23 ; crime of, 35 ; mental and moral tempera- 
ment of, 35 ; imagination of, 37 ; idealism of, 31, 38 ; restless- 
ness and discontent of, 38 ; organizing genius of, 53. 

American Statesmen, types of, 218; flatter the majority as a 
courtier flatters his king, 204 ; decline of, 212. 

American Universities, deficient in productive scholarship, 451 ; 
affiliation of, with the outside world, 466 ; student life of, 471. 

American Women, beauty of, 70 ; superiority of, to men, 73 ; in- 
dividuality of, 71 ; charm of, 72 ; manners of, 72 ; the source 
of American prosperity, 73 ; why superior to men, 74 ; freedom 

[495] 



496 Index 

of, 75, 116 ; self-control of, 77 ; contrasted with European, 76- 
81, 86 ; occupations of, 82 ; literary taste of, 84 ; activities of, 
compared to European, 88 ; patrons of hocus-pocus and quacks, 
91 ; dominate American culture, 92 ; extravagance of, 93 ; 
bondage of, to fashion, 93 ; motive of, in marriage, 100 ; virtue 
of, 102 ; as home makers, 107, 112 ; deliberation of, in mar- 
riage, 101 ; fortitude of. 111 ; dislike domestic work, 112 ; self- 
assertion of, militates against marriage and home life, 112 ; 
disinclined to bear children, 114 ; of the leisure class vapid, 
128 ; a unit in civic interest, 128 ; reason for the influence of, 
compared to European, 86, 87; compared to men in construc- 
tive ability, 90 ; influence of, on art, 85. 
Archer, on American wit, 18 ; hospitality, 28, women, 70, litera- 
ture, 324, architecture, 412, manners, 447. 

Aristocracy, in relation to dress, 94, parental authority, 116, politi- 
cal corruption, 187, marital relations, 103, literature, 310, art, 
414, manners, 436, science, 450. 

Armies, of a democracy and an aristocracy compared, 233-246. 

Arnold, on America's blindness to her shortcomings, 13 ; on Ameri- 
can women, 72 ; on the federal system, 148 ; on political cor- 
ruption, 191 ; on the tendency of democracy to suppress men 
of distinction, 306; on American literature, 326, newspapers, 
345, architecture, 411 ; on value of culture models, 423. 

Associations, great number of, in America, 256; dependence of, on 
the press, 339 ; value of, to a democracy, 207, 255, 339. 

Art, dependent on social conditions, 427. See American Art. 

Banking, in America and England compared, 62. 

Bench and Bar, in America, 354. 

Birth-Rate, in America, 114. 

Blouet, on American story-telling, 18, worship of the dollar, 32, 
restlessness, 41, newspapers, 346. 

Boasting, an American trait, 4. 

Bourget, on American conservatism, 22 ; on the attitude of Ameri- 
can men to young married women, 106 ; on the merits of local 
government, 156 ; on the tendency of democracy towards 
Caesarism, 170; on American drama, 380, education, 471, and 
art, 426. 

Brooks, a representative American preacher, 274, 285. 

Brotherhood, cultivated by democracy, 228, 298. 

Bryan, reviver of the stalwart type of statesman, 220. 

Bryce, on American women, 78, 82, 96, 107, 113; on the federal 
system, 145, 148; on the United States Senate, 184; on iwliti- 



Index 497 

cal corruption, 184, 189 ; on the tyranny of public opinion, 
204 ; on the reasons why inferior men are chosen to oflBce, 
209 ; on American lawyers, 371. 

Burne-Jones, on American energy, 47, chivalry, 105, children, 122, 
manners, 129, 443 ; on the rich class of Americans, 128 ; on 
the value of models as stimulants to art, 423. 

Capitalists, altruism of American, 27 ; compared to wage-earners 
in freedom of initative, 66; as political factors in America, 
178. 

Carlyle, on America's contribution to thought, 319. 

Caste, as influencing manners, 437, aspiration, 303, 307, persistent 
effort, 304. 

Catholic Clergy, character of, in America, 157. 

Centralization, the tendency of democracy, 162 ; enervating effects 
of, 165-170 ; hope of reaction against, 171 ; the issue of Ameri- 
can politics, 172, 177 ; as influencing mob-action, 225. 

Chastity, of women defended by American men, 104, 106, 107. 

Children, in an aristocracy and a democracy contrasted, 116; of 
England. France and America contrasted, 121 ; excessive free- 
dom of in America, 121-4 ; self-assertion of American, 123 ; in 
America and France contrasted, 125-126. 

Chivalry, in America, 104, 105. 

Christianity, in Europe bound to the corpse of superannuated 
polity, 293 ; kinship of, with democracy, 298. See Religion. 

Citizenship, obligations of, in a democracy, 261 ; estimate of good, 
according to Christ, 268; apathy of. the cause of catastrophe 
to republics, 263 ; requirements of efficient, 263. 

Civilization, in America deficient in things elevated, beautiful, 
and interesting, 424. 

Classes, intermingling of, in America, 178 ; influence of, upon poli- 
tics, 178 ; of people in reference to their use of liberty, 261. 

Class Feeling, not strong in America, 178. 

Clergy, esteem of, in America, 275; influence of, 275, 284; excel- 
lent sermons of, 276. 

College Boys and Girls, life of, 470, 475. 

Common Traditions, necessary to high order of art, 424 ; lacking 
in America, 424. 

Cooley, on class-feeling, 178 ; on the choice of democratic leaders, 
212-16; on inob-action in a democracy, 222; on the trend of 
democracy, 227; on the kinship of religion and democracy, 
297 ; on the deficiencies of American art, 420 ; on the value of 
organized types of culture, 422 ; on the relation of common 



498 Index 

tradition to art, 424 ; on tlie evil of liaste in tlie production 
of art, 425 ; on the baneful influence of wealth, 360-2. 

Criterion of Progress, 226. 

Crowds, influence of, upon democracy, 221 ; subject to discipline, 
221, 225. See Majority, Tyranny. 

Deliberation, process of, in a democracy, 225. 

Demagogues, in a democracy, 204. 

Democracy, fosters mutual help, 23; teaches discipline, 222; the 
essential ideal of, 136, 139 ; the trend of, 162, 227 ; related to 
freedom of women, 80; to parental authority, 116, to the 
status of children, 116 ; spirit of American, 136 ; equality of 
opportunity the essence of American, 139 ; promotes justice, 
180 ; extravagance of, 183 ; tends toward Caesarism, 170 ; 
chooses inferior men to oflice, 208 ; destructive rule of the 
crowd in, 221 ; American, learns restrain through experience, 
222 ; deliberative process of, 225 ; fosters the common virtues, 
226, and marital purity, 100 ; vitalized by local government, 
154. 155; may be as tyrannical as a monarchy, 200; tends 
towards centralization, 157, 162; essentials of leadership in, 
212 ; compared to monarchy in eflSciency in war, 230 ; extends 
the area of warfare, 250 ; voluntary organizations the life of, 
256; especially needs to be religious, 270; religious character- 
istics of, 283 ; emphasizes the essentials of religion, 283 ; re- 
ligion of the French, 291 ; kinship of, with religion, 296 ; in 
relation to intellectual culture, 300; tendency of, to suppress 
great ambitions, 302 ; in relation to literature, 308, to poetry, 
328, to the press, 207, 339, to the hench and bar, 355, to the 
drama, 374, to painting, 399, to the industial arts, 414, to man- 
ners, 436, to science, 449, to history, 456, to education, 465, to 
philosophy, 480. 

Democratic Party, principles of, 172, 176. 

Despotism, restrained by the federal system, 171, 207 ; liability of 
democracy to, 200. 

De Tocqueville, on American boasting, 4, conservatism, 22. al- 
truism, 23, idealism, 32, discontent and restlessness, 39, genius 
for organization, 53, women, 73, 75, 101, 102, 104, 111, par- 
ental authority, 116 ; on the essence of democracy, 136, 138 ; 
on the merits of the federal system, 142 ; on the value of local 
government, 151, 152, 154, 156 ; on the American judiciary, 
159 ; on the superiority of an aristocracy in administration, 
181 ; on democratic extravagance, 183 ; on political corruption, 
187 ; on the sway of public opinion, 198 ; on the tyranny of the 



Index 499 

majority, 200 ; on the centralizing tendency of democracy. 157, 
162, 165; on the enervating effects of centralization, 203; on 
the individual reaction against centralization, 171 ; on the 
tendency of democracy to select inferior leaders, 208, 211 ; on 
the relation of democracy to efficiency in war, 233. 241, 246 ; 
on voluntary organizations in America, 256 ; on the importance 
of religion in a democracy, 270, 272 ; on religious excesses in 
America, 279 : on the character of religion in a democracy, 
282-3 : on democracy and formalism, 283, 289 ; on religious 
freedom, 292 ; on the relation of democracy to intellectual 
culture, 300 ; on literary productions in America, 308 ; on the 
character of democratic literature^ 310, 328 ; on American 
newspapers, 338. bench and bar, 355, 364, 368, jury. 363-4, 
drama, 374, oratory, 387, 390, industrial arts, 414, 417. man- 
ners, 436-41, science. 449, education. 461-4. philosophy, 477. 

Dickens, on American boasting, 7, worship of the dollar, 30: on 
American humor, 17, politics, 194, manners, 424, 434, news- 
papers, 345. education, 464. 

Discontent, of American people, 38. 

Distinguished Men, democracy not favorable to, 208 ; in America 
attracted to private careers, 209; American electoral system 
not favorable to, 211 ; not necessarily goofl leaders, 212 ; not 
generally champions of reform, 213. 

Divorce, ethical causes for in America, 132. 

Dower, as viewed in America and Europe, 33. 

Drama, the most democratic of arts, 374; character of. in 
America. 380. 

Dress, American extravagance in, 93. 95, 96. 

Education, unfavorably effected by women, 93 ; effect of, on mar- 
riage. 115, and the birth-rate, 114 ; character of, in America, 
465. 

Efficiency, in relation to American industry, 65, and domestic life, 
134 ; of democracy and monarchy compared, 242, 252 ; applied 
to free government, 263 ; of the Gennan type, 252 ; in relation 
to altruism, 254 ; applied to citizenship. 263, and the arts, 427, 

Egoistic Class, in a democracy, 261. 

Elections, evil of frequent, 148. 

Electoral System, in America not favorable to distinguished men, 
211. 

Eliot, on the relative efficiency of democracy and monarchy. 242; 
on the moral tenets of religion, 288. 

Emerson, the exponent of American characteristics, 15. 



500 Index 



England, position of women in, 78, 108, 110 ; status of children in, 
120 ; democratic trend in, 392 ; statesmen of 392. 

English, pugnacity, 3; manner of boasting, 7, 8; and American 
humor contrasted, 20; and American women contrasted, 108; 
and American corruption contrasted, 108, 190 ; statesmen, 392 ; 
manners, 440, 444; contribution to material progress, 242, to 
thought, 246 ; to victory in the World War, 251. 

Equality, of opportunity the essence of democracy, 139 ; as affect- 
ing ambition, 305. 

Evil, the philosophy of, 486. 

Family Life, affected unfavorably by the self-assertion of women, 
112; felicity of, in America, 133; of the rich and poor in 
America, 128, 131 ; in America influenced by environment, 
135 ; unfavorable status of, in America, 134. 

Fashions, tyranny of, in America, 93. 

Federal System, merits of the American, 142 ; hinders despotism, 
155 ; stimulates self-reliance, 152 ; limits the spread of dis- 
order, 147 ; lightens the burden of the national government, 
148 ; effects better oversight of local interests, 148. 

Formalism, related to democracy, 145, 282, 283, 289; of the legal 
profession, 356, 367-8. 

France, education, of women in, 76 ; position of women in, 81 ; 
political corruption in, 188 ; religion in, 291 ; great statesmen 
of, 391. 

Freedom, of women in America, 75, 77, 79, 104 ; of children in 
America, 75; domestic and political, related, 80, 120; of re- 
ligion in America, 292 ; value of, in education, 75, 473. 

French, manner of bragging, 7 ; revolution overthrew local gov- 
ernment, 158 ; statesmen, 391 ; and American men contrasted 
in their respect for women, 106 ; radicalism, reason for, 224. 

Generosity, of Americans, 28. 

GeniuSj in relation to democracy, 208; the value of, in a democ- 
racy, 212 ; requires a group spirit in order to mature, 420. 

German, contribution to culture, 246 ; efficiency, 254 ; religion, 274, 
278; influence on American painting, 401, and on American 
history, 459. 

German Democracy, 229. 

Germany, status of children in, 121 ; federation of, compared to 
the American, 143, 146 ; one-sidedness of historians in, 459. 

Girls, training of American, 75 ; precocious knowledge among 
American, 77 ; of American and Europe contrasted, 78. 

Happiness, dependent on personal relationship, 45. 



Index 501 

Haste, an American characteristic, 47 ; destructive to high 
achievement in art, 425. 

Hero Worship, of Americans, 29. 

History, in a democracy and an aristocracy contrasted, 455 ; in 
a democracy tends to broad generalizations, 456, and to fatal- 
ism, 457. See American History. 

Honesty, fostered by democracy, 228. 

Hospitality, of the Americans, 28. 

Humor, of the Americans, 15, 351 ; related to democratic fellow- 
ship, 21, and to self-mastery, 21. 

Husbands, how chosen by American women, 100 ; in England and 
America contrasted, 108. 

Ideals, of American democracy, 139. 

Idealism, of the Americans, 29, 31, 38 ; vagueness of American, 38, 
43; in American philosophy, 485. 

Imagination, of the Americans, 37; influenced by democracy, 38, 
304. 

Immigration, influencing national character, 46. 

Individualism, of the American, 14. 

Industrial Arts, of a democracy and aristocracy contrasted, 414, 
417 ; imitation and counterfeiting in, 417 ; influenced by indus- 
trial efficiency, 418, 427. 

Industry, characteristics of American, 47; defects of American, 
60, 65. 

Inherited Fortune, influencing marriage, 33. 

Instincts, of Americans, 2; play of, necessary to efficiency and 
contentment, 60. 

Institutions, vitalized by voluntary organizations, 207, 255, 339. 

Intellectual Culture, influenced by democracy, 300. 

Inventiveness, of Americans, 48, 60, 453. 

Isolation, aptitude of Americans for, 14. 

Italians, temperament of, 36; contribution of, to culture, 246. 

James, representative American philosopher, 481 ; on the function 
of reflection, 481 ; his philosophic point of view, 482-6. 

Judiciary, extraordinary power of the American, 159 ; character 
of the American, 372, 442. 

Jury, value of, to democracy. 363-6 ; a restraint upon tyranny, 207. 

Justice, promoted by common feeling, 228. 

Kindness, of the Americans, 256 ; promoted by democracy, 228 ; a 
characteristic of American manners, 446. 

Kinship, of democracy and religion, 296 ; between lawyers and the 
common people, 363. 



502 Index 

Kipling, a type of braggart, 9 ; on the Yankee nasal twang, 433. 
Laborers, strict discipline of American, 50; of America and 
England contrasted, 49, 51 ; lack incentive and initiative, 66. 

Lawyers and Democracy, 355. 

Leadership, essentials of, in a democracy, 212 ; influenced by po- 
litical organizations, 193 ; reasons for inferior, in America, 
208, 218; American types of, 218; effect of crowd-rule upon, 
221 ; the role of expert opinion in, 225 ; by lawyers, 367. 

League of Nations, an evolution of brotherhood, 228. 

Le Bon, on the destructive action of crowd-rule, 221 ; his argument 
answered, 222. 

Lecturers, in America, 394. 

Libraries, American, 314. 

Literature, influenced by democracy, 308. See American Litera- 
ture. 

Local Government, a training for industrial organization, 53 ; the 
chief feature of American democracy, 150; the strength of 
free nations, 154, 155 ; promotes efficiency in local affairs, 148 ; 
especially important for a democracy, 156. 

Macaulay, on democracy in America, 216. 

Majority Rule, not the essence of American democracy, 142, 171; 
despotism of, 200; tendency of, to Caesarism, 170; tends to 
push measures to an extreme, 205 ; effect of, in America, 204. 

Manners, of democracy and aristocracy contrasted, 436, 445. 

Marriage, in America and Europe contrasted, 33; motive of, in 
America, 100. 

Masses, of people as factors of reform, 215, 217. 

Meditation, necessary to high achievement, 4.50 ; lack of, among 
Americans, 450. 

Military Nations, tend to perish in competition with industrial 
nations, 253. 

Military Spirit, quenched by democracy, 233. 

Millionaires, character of American, 27. 

Mob-Action, in reference to the American and French democracies, 
222. 

Money, American worship of, 30. 

Montesquieu, on universal suffrage, 216. 

Morals, of America and Europe contrasted, 35. 

Moral Temperament, of Americans, 35. 

Moral Unity, fostered by democracy, 228. 

Motion Pictures, influence of, 383. 

Munsterberg, on the self-determination of the Americans, 14 ; on 



Index 503 

American humor, 19, generosity, 28, idealism, 33, pecuniary 
marriages, 33, industry, 53, inventions, 60, women, 89, 92, 101, 
112, birth-rate, 114, divorce, 133, political corruption, 196, 
political parties, 172, 177, religion, 273, 280, 287, 296, litera- 
ture, 312, 321, libraries, 314, newspapers, 346, drama, 380, 
orators. 392, music, 396, painting, 398, science, 451, history, 
453, education, 465, 468-9, sculpture, 403. 

Music, in America, 395. 

Negative Class, a menace to democracy, 261. 

Newspapers, humor of American, 351 ; inimical to the rise of 
distinguished men, 345 ; value of, to a democracy, 207, 339 ; 
in America and France contrasted, 341 ; of America attract 
men of mediocre, ability, 342; sensational, 345; influence of, 
on public opinion, 344, 350 ; enterprise of, 344 ; reporters of, 
346 ; high character of the best, 352. 

Orators, of America, 386. 

Oratory, opportunities for, in America, 386; of an aristocracy and 
democracy contrasted, 387 ; American talent for, 392-3 ; vices 
of American, 387. 

Organization, American genius for, 53; necessary to reform, 263, 
to freedom of discussion, 207, and to wise leadership, 195. 

Ostrogorski, on political corruption, 196. 

Painters, American, 398. 

Painting in America, 398 ; democratic aspect of, 399 ; history of 
American, 400. 

Parental Authority, decline of, 116. 

Paternalism, in industry, 67. 

Philanthropy, in America, 28, 29. 

Poetry, in relation to democracy, 328 ; of a democracy and an 
aristocracy contrasted, 330, 333. 

Political Corruption, in America, 187, 263. 

Political Life, in America, not attractive to distinguished men, 209. 

Political Machine, in America, 193; influence of, 193. 

Political "Parties, in America, 172. 

Pragmatic Type of Statesmanship, 219. 

Pragmatism, of American philosophy, 486. 

Presidency, why occupied by inferior men, 209. 

Prevision, need of, in respect to American culture, 135. 

Pride of Americans. 4. 

Public Opinion, in America, 46, 141, 198-202. 

Quacks, fostered by American women, 91. 

Race Problem, in America, 46. 



504 Index 

Race Suicide, 114, 

Reform, as influenced by the instincts of pugnacity and repulsion, 
4, 15. 

Religion, character of, in a democracy, 282, 283 ; of Colonial 
America, 265 ; especially important in a democracy, 270 ; 
strength of, in America, 272; in America and Germany con- 
trasted, 274, 275; practical nature of, in America. 276, 285; 
militant character of, in America, 289 ; in America not formal, 
282, 289; in relation to the state, 292; kinship of, with 
democracy, 296. 

Religious Excesses, in America, due to reaction against bondage 
to material pursuits. 279. 

Religious Freedom, in America, 292. 

Religious Revivals, 267. 

Religious Sects, cause of numerous, 279. 

Republican Party, principles of the, 272, 176. 

Respect for Women, in America, 104-5, in France, 106. 

Restlessness, of the Americans, 38. 

Revolutions, democracies not favorable to, 233 ; encouraged by 
democratic armies, 238. 

Roosevelt, a great organizer, 57 ; reform leader, 195 ; changes the 
character of politics, 220. 

Ross, on authoritative leadership, 225. 

Royce, on American philosophy, 482 ; on the philosophy of evil, 486. 

Ruskin, on English pugnacity, 3; on the meaning of romance, 384. 

Science, influenced by democracy, 449. 

Scientists, American, 452-5. 

Scott, on American manners, 429. 

Sculpture, American, 403. 

Self- Assertion, of Americans, 4. 

Self-Control, of Americans, 22. 

Self-Reliance, of Americans, 14, 

Senate, of the United States, merits of, 150. 

Sensitiveness, of Americans, 42. 

Smith, Sydney, on religious freedom in America, 293 ; on Ameri- 
can and English manners, 444 ; on American education, 460. 

Social Conditions, influencing the character of art, 427. 

Society Women, of America, 128. 

Sovereignty of the People, 136. 

Speculation, rage for, in America, 61. 

Spencer, on the relation of democracy to freedom of women, SO : 
on the relation of domestic to nolitical freedom, 120 ; adminis- 



Index 505 

trative efficiency as related to democracy and aristot-racy, 
180 ; on American newspapers, 345. 

Spiritual Life, its origin and meaning, 486. 

Spiritual Warfare, necessary to great literature, 310. 

Stalwart, a political type of citizen, 219. 

Standardization, in relation to art, 418, 427. 

State Governments, inefficiency of, 185. 

State Religion, fatal to the Church, 293. 

Statesmen, character of American, 218; of the American Revolu- 
tion, 212 ; types of American, 219 ; themes of democratic, 390 ; 
of distinction in America, 218-220. 

Strenuous Life, suited to execution but not insight, 426 ; unfavor- 
able to science and art, 426, 450. 

Suffering, spiritual value of, 319. 

Sycophancy, in a democracy, 204. 

Taft, on the tyranny of the majority, 205 ; a stalwart type, 220. 

Technical Schools, in America and England compared, 467. 

Tenement Life, 131. 

Teutonic Races, pugnacity of, 2 ; temperament of, 36. 

Trend of Culture, dependent on voluntary organizations, 263. 

Trollope, Frances, on the physical prowess of Americans, 3 ; on 
religious revivals, 267 ; on American literature, 316 ; on 
American manners, 429, 433. 

Truth, fostered by democratic unity, 228. 

Tyranny, domestic related to political, 80, 120; checks on, 171, 
207 ; of centralized government, 200. 

United States, a union of independent states, 142 ; in the World 
War, 252. 

\an Dyke, on the self-reliance of Americans, 14; on American al- 
truism, 25, and worship of the dollar, 30; on the essence of 
democracy, 139; on American parties, 176, manners, 447. 
education, 466. 

Vanity, of Americans, 4. 

Veto, value of, in a democracy, 184. 

Voluntary Organizations, more important than political, 207; 
extent of, in America. 256 ; list of, in America, 259 ; the posi- 
tive factors of democracy, 263. 

War. efficiency in, of democracy and monarchy, 230; methods of 
revolutionized by democracy, 249 ; made more extensive by 
democracy, 250; success of, among democracies dependent on 
numbers, 250. 



506 Index 

Wealth, English and American estimate of, 33; as appraised by 
Americans, 34 ; isolating and narrowing effect of, 361 ; in- 
fluence of, upon the people, 362. 

Wells, on American aims, 69. 

Wilson, interpreter of democratic tendencies, 218 ; a stalwart type, 
220. 

Wit and Humor, of Americans, 15. 

Wives, American and European contrasted, 108. 

Women. See American Women. 

World War, comparative efiiciency of the Central and Allied 
powers in, 230 ; progress of the^ 251. 

Young Men's Christian Association, functions of the, 278. 



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